Ice Station Zebra

Amazon.com

Out of step with the public mood when it was released in 1968, Ice Station Zebra has held up decently as a Guy's Movie. Based on an Alistair MacLean novel, the film is half submarine picture and half spy puzzler, short on action but long on military chatter and espionage gamesmanship. Rock Hudson, looking seasoned and just a little miffed, gives one of his better performances as the captain of a nuclear sub, ordered to the Arctic to check out a disturbance at a research station on the floating ice. He doesn't know the mission, but he's stuck with mysterious passengers: haughty British agent Patrick McGoohan, back-slapping Russian operative Ernest Borgnine, and hostile Marine captain Jim Brown. McGoohan gets the film's best lines and finest fur jacket, but Brown is pretty cool in a smaller role.

John Sturges directs, with customary deliberateness; at times the movie seems to be suffering from iron-poor blood. Much of the dialogue is pretty sharp, especially in the submarine half, enough to keep you engrossed if you're in the mood for this kind of thing. When the action shifts to the ice, the studio-bound sets inevitably take their toll. It's not hard to see how this large, old-fashioned project misfired in the era of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, but the more tantalizing question is: Why did this movie become an obsessive favorite of Howard Hughes? Maybe he liked how clean it all looks. --Robert Horton

Description

The U.S. nuclear sub Tigerfish churns toward the North Pole. Its mission: rescue the imperiled members of weather outpost Ice Station Zebra. On board are Cmdr. Ferraday and his crew, several unexpected arrivals with secret orders - and enough suspicions, suspense and twists to make Ice Station Zebra an engrossing espionage thriller. The Cold War heats up as John Sturges (The Great Escape) directs Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan, Jim Brown and more in this epic adventure nominated for two Academy Awards?* and featuring taut action set pieces above and below the ice. All hands to stations for excitement!

DVD Features:
Featurette:Vintage Making-of Featurette The Man Who Makes the Difference
Theatrical Trailer:Theatrical Trailer

Customer Reviews:

What just happened?.......2007-09-13

As with any good espionage movie, the viewer is left to puzzle over who works for whom. As an added layer, better espionage films leave the viewer to wonder about who is playing whom. Although this film has the elements of a better espionage film, it seems more of an afterthought.

This movie from the late 1960s is based in the Cold War conflict and has both the spy game as well as a submarine under the polar ice cap. The movie spends almost too much time in the submarine and not enough at the ice station, but given the race to complete their objectives, this is probably more realistic.

Rock Hudson and Patrick McGoohan play their roles well and have the dialogue available to explore their roles. Jim Brown is well suited to his role, but he wasn't given enough to fully show his ability. Ernest Borgnine played the Russian defector, but his beret and accent made it difficult to see him as Russian.

This is not a blockbuster or an epic film (even though it plays an overture in the beginning and has an intermission). It is a fairly good movie from the Cold War and is good for a casual view.

a great spy movie!.......2007-09-08

Finally this thing is out on DVD! Would have been nice to have more extras, but guess we all should be glad it's out at all. The quality of the transfer seems to be really clear, with no visible 'glitches'.

Bought "Ice Station Zebra" mainly because I'm a big Patrick McGoohan fan. :)

Bare Bones Release of a Movie that Deserved More.......2007-06-15

Alistair MacLean was a phenomenon. A born story teller, he wrote tense novels of men in desperate situations, with usually an unknown spy in their midst. "The Guns of Navarone" was his most famous novel-to-film; and "Where Eagles Dare" was an amazing case of film-into-novel. MacLean's books were usually exciting, full of hairpin turns and twists -- with _Ice Station Zebra_ one of his twistiest.

The novel is about an American nuclear submarine going to the rescue of the survivors of a meteorological site in the Arctic that has been extensively damaged by fire. What the commander of the submarine slowly discovers is that the doctor sent on his sub to care for the burn victims is also a secret agent out to nail the culprit who set the fire deliberately to cover up for the murder of an intelligence agent. MacLean also throws in a rigmarole about a crashed Soviet satellite just for good measure.

The movie both improves AND cheapens the story. The exigencies of movie-making naturally force a tightening of the story, and MacLean's story needed tightening. After the rescue of the burn victims, MacLean's novel moves at a crawl while the traitor is uncovered (and for once in MacLean, it's no great revelation). While MacLean limns the characters aboard the submarine fairly well (with swift strokes, working with words as Van Gogh did with the brightly-colored paint laid thick on the canvas), the folks rescued from the Ice Station become little more than a list of names. He tries to separate them by throwing in a set of twins, and a jolly doctor named Dr. Jolly; but none of these characters ever stand out as individuals in a novel. Even the swift strokes he gives the submarine characters aren't enough; the only really good character in the book is the "I" character (who would become McGoohan's character in the movie).

The movie presents its characters by casting. Rock Hudson (in a role that might've been better played by Gregory Peck) is the solid (stolid), and not overly bright, sub captain. McGoohan portrays a mysterious character who is obviously a secret agent (which the viewer realizes by the mysterious way he's brought on board and by the fact that he's played by an actor who was playing a secret agent in a tv show when the movie was made). Ernest Borgnine plays an overly affectionate Russian defector with his typical gregarious aplomb and a cheap accent. Jim Brown is a marine with ice water in his veins. Neither of the latter characters appears in the book.

The story is tightened by having the traitor among the existing characters on the sub (not necessarily the stars, mind). In the movie, the folks on the ice station have all become deranged by the tragedy and have no effective part in the story. This was one of the few faults in a MacLean story: the dirty Commie traitor is brought on board the sub half-way through the book; one didn't come to feel his treachery personally by having the traitor be someone his reader had come to know and like.

Where the movie cheapens the story is by bringing in a bunch of Soviet paratroopers who have a face-off with the American marines in the Arctic (a bad pun on the Cold War?) that seems to preach the advantages of the nutso concept of Mutally Assured Destruction. The ending even hints at the "Why Can't We All Just Get Along?" nonsense Hollywood loves to spout at every turn. I love to read about problems on movie sets due to overblown egos, the fights stars have over the placement of their names, etc.; and then hear Hollywood's plaintive and hypocritical cry of why can't we all just get along. Tell the bloated and overpaid stars to get along with the people in their circle first, and then maybe they can work out from there.

So, while the reworking of characters actually improves the story by tightening its nuts with another twist of the screw, MacLean's cat-and-mouse tale becomes an exercise in idiocy in its final twenty to thirty minutes. I think the novel's last act might've been more effective on screen than it was in the novel. It certainly would've been more exciting than the foolishness of the American/Soviet confrontation.

One way the book and the movie are similar, though, is that both are slightly overlong. Another way the novel and the movie are alike is that it's ridiculously easy to guess who the spy in their midst is in both cases; though (for readers of the book) that person is radically different in the movie than he was in the book.

Rock Hudson does it again........2007-05-24

I see by all the other reviews there is little else I can add--those guys, they beat me to it!

1. Rock Hudson did his second best acting I remember (Martian Chronicals was his best, I think). Jim Brown came off perfectly as a marine Captain who worked his way up through the ranks rather than being appointed to his position--no nonsense, good. Patrick McGoohan was a perfect British agent--he reminded me of the British agent in Where Eagles Dare (you wonder if they're all like that?). Ernest Borgnine could always act as far as I can remember--fine job.

2. Writing is fine.
3. Storyline, above average.
4. Special effects, realistic.
5. Best scene is the torpedo room flooding--some tense moments there.

There are no CONS: in this movie for those of you who like this type of movie. I think everybody else would give it a three star rating if they don't like this type of movie. Either way I don't see any real short comings to this movie so I recommend it. Bye!

Buy, don't rent--it's a classic.

ROCK HUDSON AT HIS BEST ******.......2007-05-19

Sure this movie falters when it hits the ice because of being shot on sets instead of location but, thats the way it used to be done and, if you let yourself go you wont mind. The story up to that point is completely engrossing and believable! Actually the scenes on the ice are tricky enough to have made me forget that it was on a set! Get the popcorn and just Enjoy this adventure!!! IT'S FUN!!! It's Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine ,Jim Brown etc.!!!

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