Avalanche Express (1979) on Netflix
CIA agent Harry Wargrave helps Soviet General Marenkov defect to the West. They board the Atlantic Express, a train crossing Europe. Russian spy-catcher Nikolai Bunin tries to stop them.
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- Netflix1.7/5
- IMDb4.9/101,988 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes20%
Trailer
Plot summary
Soviet General Marenkov, who runs Operation Winter Harvest, a plan to poison crops in the West, chooses to defect. CIA agent Harry Wargrave leads the extraction team. They meet in Milan at La Scala and put Marenkov aboard the Atlantic Express. Wargrave decides they should travel to safety on that train. KGB spy-catcher Nikolai Bunin leads the Soviet agents trying to stop the defection.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Avalanche Express (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Mark Robson fell ill after 65 days of filming in Europe with ten days left, was flown to a London hospital and died of a heart attack on 20 June 1978, aged 64. Filming had been physically tough, with tighter security because of terrorism in Europe.
- Robert Shaw died of a heart attack on 28 August 1978 before he could dub his dialogue for Avalanche Express. Voice actor Robert Rietti dubbed most of his lines, because Monte Hellman felt Shaw's ill health during shooting had hurt his delivery, and only a handful of Shaw's own lines survived.
- After Robson's death, Lorimar's Peter Bart hired Monte Hellman to finish directing and Gene Corman, Roger Corman's brother, to complete his producing duties. Hellman had recently helped finish The Greatest after its director Tom Gries died.
- The film's entire opening sequence was re-dubbed: instead of having the Russians speak accented English, the scene was redone in Russian with English subtitles.
