We've all experienced this, probably more so now in this age of seven thousand channels: You're at home, it's late at night, and none of your usual TV shows interests you right now. So you think, "Ahh, I'll just flip through a few channels before going to bed." And then... YOU SEE IT. The movie that exerts a mesmeric control over you. Oh yes, you know it's not a classic film -- it might not even be a GOOD film. Yet when this film appears, either in a split-second glimpse as you channel-surf or in the multicolored Guide of the Damned, you must watch it.

Oh sure, maybe you have to get up for work the next day and certainly you could easily press the DVR button and record it for watching tomorrow, but none of that matters. It's here. Now. And It Must Be Watched.

For me, it's 1968's Where Eagles Dare, an action-packed, twisting, highly improbable, and HUGELY entertaining Alistair MacLean WWII spy caper starring Richard Burton and a very young Clint Eastwood. Unlike many films based on MacLean's novels, Where Eagles Dare is unique in that MacLean wrote the novel and the screenplay at the same time! Burton plays Major John Smith, a top British spy ordered to lead a team into the mountains of Bavaria to rescue another spy from the clutches of the German SS before he spills super-secret plans. The sole non-British member of Smith’s team is U.S. Ranger Morris Schaffer (yes, Clint Eastwood once played a guy named Morris). But why has Schaffer been assigned? What does the captured spy REALLY know? And why do members of Smith’s team start dying as soon as drop into Bavaria?

I won’t say more about the plot, and I suggest you avoid reading the easily available plot summaries online. I will say that the numerous twists often leave me shaking my head in disbelief while smiling with absolute glee. Burton is terrific, and Eastwood is, well, Clint! He must kill about a third of the German army in this movie. The action is great. Besides the gun battles, there’s a fight onboard a mountain cable car that’s a must-see, even with the obvious green-screen effects. And Where Eagles Dare stays true to form by ending with ... one more twist!

There are a bunch of great ‘60s character actors in here, too, including Anton Diffring. Yet I first watched this movie in my teens because the buxom Ingrid Pitt (of Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers) has a supporting part, and I needed to see her. (Huzzah!) So thank you, Ms. Pitt and my teen hormones, for introducing me to this epic.

What about you? What movie never fails to pull you in, no matter how many times you’ve seen it before?