Sky Riders


Sky Riders is a 1976 American action film directed by Douglas Hickox and starring James Coburn, Susannah York and Robert Culp.
The rescue sequences were filmed in Meteora in Greece where the finale of the later James Bond film For Your Eyes Only was also set later in 1981.
On January 17, 2012 the film was released on DVD through Shout! Factory as part of a double feature with The Last Hard Men.

Plot summary

The wife, Ellen, of an international industrialist and her two children are kidnapped from their Athens home by a terrorist group and taken to an abandoned monastery on an imposing, needle-shaped island. Jim McCabe, Ellen's ex-husband hires a crew of professional hang gliders to help him rescue her and the kids from the terrorist's mountain top lair.

Cast

Coburn's casting was announced in May 1975. The film was part of a slate of productions from Sandy Howard.
After an explosion on the set of Sky Riders in which a Greek electrician died, producer Terry Morse Jr. was arrested and producer Sandy Howard was detained for several weeks. A $250,000 out-of-court settlement was made, which one Variety article called a "bribe" so the crew member responsible would not be imprisoned by the military regime.

Reception

The film was a failure at the box office in the US but did better internationally.
Howard hired Jack Hill to write a sequel. He later said "I pitched them my idea, which they thought was good, and I wrote the script. Well, it turned out that the movie was a big flop and no one could understand why. I knew why - it was because they had the theory that it should be wall to wall action and there is nothing more boring." Hill then wrote City of Fire and Death Ship for Howard.