The Cassandra Crossing movie storyline. When the existence of a strain of plague (vaguely identified as pneumonic) is revealed at the US mission at the International Health Organization, three terrorists seek to blow up the US mission. Two of them are shot, one mortally, by security personnel but one escapes.
The surviving terrorist is hospitalised and quarantined and identified as Swedish. Elena Stradner and US military intelligence Colonel Stephen Mackenzie argue over the nature of the strain, which Stradner suspects is a biological weapon but which Colonel Mackenzie claims was in the process of being destroyed.
The third terrorist, Eklund, escapes and stows away on a train bound from Geneva to Stockholm. Stradner believes that the train should be stopped so that the terrorist can be removed and quarantined, but Col. Mackenzie is concerned that all of the passengers on the train might be infected. Mackenzie insists on rerouting the train to a disused railway line which goes to a former Nazi concentration camp in Janov, Poland where the passengers will be quarantined. However, the line crosses a dangerously unsound steel arch bridge known as the Kasundruv Bridge or the “Cassandra Crossing”, out of use since 1948 (former railway Zagorz-Solina-Turka-Lviv between Poland and Ukraine)
Mackenzie understands that the bridge might collapse as the train passes over it. The presence of the infected terrorist, and the rerouting of the train, precipitates the second conflict, among passengers on the train; they include Jonathan Chamberlain, a famous neurologist, his ex-wife Jennifer Rispoli Chamberlain, a former inmate of Janov and Holocaust survivor Herman Kaplan, and Nicole Dressler, the wife of a German arms dealer. She is embroiled in an affair with her young companion Robby Navarro. Navarro is a heroin trafficker being pursued by Interpol agent Haley, who is travelling undercover as a priest.
Mackenzie informs Chamberlain of the presence of Eklund, who is found, but attempts to remove him via a helicopter are unsuccessful because the train enters a tunnel. Chamberlain is also told that the plague has a 60% mortality rate. Mackenzie, however, informs passengers that police have received reports of anarchist bombs placed along the rail line, and that the train will be rerouted to Nuremberg. There the train is sealed with an enclosed oxygen system and a US Army medical team is placed aboard, with the now-deceased terrorist being placed in a hermetically-sealed coffin.
Chamberlain learns of the risk of the Cassandra Crossing. He also begins to suspect the disease is not as serious as originally thought: few of the passengers have become infected and few of those have actually died. He radios MacKenzie suggesting the infected portion of the train be uncoupled and isolated, but MacKenzie, acting under orders, has no intention of stopping the train: if, as expected, the Cassandra Crossing collapses, it will neatly cover the fact that the U.S has been harbouring germ warfare agents in a neutral country. Chamberlain and Haley form a group of passengers to overcome the guards and seize control of the train before it reaches the doomed bridge.
The Cassandra Crossing is a 1976 disaster thriller film directed by George Pan Cosmatos and starring Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Ava Gardner, Martin Sheen, Burt Lancaster, Lee Strasberg and O. J. Simpson about an infected Swedish terrorist who infects a train’s passengers as they head to a derelict arch bridge.
With the backing of the media tycoon Sir Lew Grade (the head of the British broadcast network Associated Television) and the Italian film producer Carlo Ponti, the international all-star cast was expected to attract a widespread audience, with rights sold prior to filming, to both British and American distributors. Ponti also saw the production as a showcase for his wife, Sophia Loren.
The Cassandra Crossing (1977)
Directed by: George Pan Cosmatos
Starring: Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Martin Sheen, O. J. Simpson, Lee Strasberg, Alida Valli, Stefano Patrizi, Fausta Avelli, Thomas Hunter
Screenplay by: Tom Mankiewicz, Robert Katz, George Pan Cosmatos
Cinematography by: Ennio Guarnieri
Film Editing by: Roberto Silvi, Françoise Bonnot
Costume Design by: Adriana Berselli
Set Decoration by: Mario Liverani
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: AVCO Embassy Pictures
Release Date: February 9, 1977
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