The Colorado Springs Gazette final

Fleeing Nazis inspired former Colorado Springs resident’s new film

BY JENNIFER MULSON jen.mulson@gazette.com Contact the writer: 636-0270

Growing up in Colorado Springs, Phil Blattenberger lived in an apartment that looked out over big, wideopen fields.

It was the ’90s and early 2000s, before the city began to sprawl into surrounding empty spaces. Those vistas inspired a love of storytelling, something he stumbled into later in life when his first screenplay was made into the 2019 Vietnam war film “Point Man.”

His second movie, the action thriller “Condor’s Nest,” was released in select theaters Friday, and is also available on streaming platforms, including Apple TV, Amazon, Comcast and Vudu.

“My love of adventure and narrative storytelling was a well that sprung deep in Colorado,” said screenwriter and director Blattenberger. “Growing up I was watching ‘Indiana Jones’ and loving adventure movies and having that landscape in Colorado.”

As a homeschooled kid, he lived throughout the Pikes

Peak region — Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs and Woodland Park — before his Air Force family moved to North Carolina in 2001.

In “Condor’s Nest,” set a decade after the fall of Nazi Germany, an American aviator travels across South America to seek revenge against the German colonel who murdered his squad of airmen.

Blattenberger was inspired by the 10,000 Nazis who fled Germany after the fall of the Third Reich to pursue new lives in South America, where they hoped to fade into society and avoid extradition for their crimes.

“It’s been on my radar for years,” he said. “I wanted to do something people haven’t seen a thousand times before. It’s a classic story told in a new way, with a backdrop of a cauldron of war criminals in far-flung South America that have to be hunted down.”

The film stars a wealth of actors Blattenberger grew up with, including Arnold Vosloo (“The Mummy”), Michael Ironside (“Top Gun,” “Total Recall”), Jackson Rathbone (“Twilight” saga) and Jorge Garcia (“Lost”).

“I saw some of these actors on TV as a kid,” Blattenberger said. “To have the villain from ‘The Mummy’ facing me? What an absolute rush. But you’re there to do a job. I was worried going into it because it was my first time directing big name talent, but those guys come in and clock in for work. You do the same thing.”

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2023-01-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-01-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://daily.gazette.com/article/283841512565310

The Gazette, Colorado Springs