Alan Spencer on ICE STATION ZEBRA
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 มิ.ย. 2015
- Directed by John Sturges, an expert at action-powered epics, Ice Station Zebra is one of the last of the deluxe “roadshow” movies (it even comes with an overture and intermission). It was too square for late sixties audiences but seen now it plays like a relic from the fifties, as comfortable as an old shoe and just as unfashionable. Shrewd casting paired Hollywood icon Rock Hudson with newly minted action star Jim Brown and 60’s cult favorite Patrick McGoohan in the leads.
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As a kid seeing this on the big screen this had everything you want in an adventure movie. I still like it to this day and yes McGoohan does have the best lines but Hudson has a great response as one of the Marines on board nervously says "None of us has ever been on a Nuclear Sub before." Hudson as the Sub's Captain says " Rest easy son , I have".
I agree...Patrick McGoohan was the "icing" on the cake in this movie. The music was great also!
Always felt Hudson did well in that movie. Interesting about the Chayefsky contributions as well as Peck being first cast.
I love this movie.....being a 22 year Navy Vet....Rock Hudson is a great example of a Navy seagoing skipper
He was a Navy vet and had seen combat in the Pacific (albeit on a carrier).
Loved this movie when I saw it as a kid. Saw it a couple of years ago after 30 years or so...and it was still a great flick. Loved McGoohan as well as Hudson, Borgnine and Brown in this one.
I love this movie
I saw this film the first time at a drive-in theater back in my hometown. Lost track of the number of times I've caught it on TV since. It's over the top in ways, but still enjoyable.
I've just finished The Prisoner and have had mixed thoughts about approaching this. Glad to hear McGoohan makes it worth it.
This movie was a plot, perhaps unintentionally, from the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV show, the pilot episode 1964. To stop an atomic bomb planted by the "Enemy." Just a grander scale. And Patrick McGoogan was a TV star but was no stranger to film prior to Ice station Zebra, as implied here in the narrative with the line "At the time it was rare for TV stars to jump to the big screen." He'd already been on the big screen: Hell Drivers 1957, Dr. Syn Alias the Scarecrow 1963, the Three Lives of Thomasina 1963, All Night Long 1962, The Gypsy and the Gentleman 1958, High Tide at Noon 1957, etc etc. Many were British films, supporting parts,...but he was experienced in film long before he was "Secret Agent Man," or "Danger Man" or Number Six" in the Prisoner, let alone Ice Station Zebra. Which could have been Ice Station Aardvark, Or Ice Station Fever, but that would have needed disco music, which hadn't been invented yet... Thank God...IMO without McGoohan this movie would be nothing but an adventure in lame scripts, acting, and special effects, esp the model planes flying in front of a pre-filmed screen. McGoohan gave Rock Hudson someone to play off of, ramped up the movie by his acting, and Borgnine was a better actor than what he was given to do. He was an Oscar winner.
McGoohan was given equal billing to established American movie stars in a big studio picture, hence the leap to the big screen. That wasn't happening to other small screen actors of the time.
isn't it obvious why Howard Hughes watched it compulsively? Jets?
@Trailers From Hell. Prisoner Fan here. Awesome 411. I didn't know Patrick McGoohan took time off from filming that series to act in this pic. Always assumed it was his 1st work after the series ended. THX 4 the 411. Also - this wasn't technically a TRUE 3 strip Cinerama film. It was a Super Panavision 70mm print labeled as Cinerama.
Rock Hudson surrounded by seamen; I think he was skating on thin ice!
Hughes watched it over and over again because he suffered from his famous OCD. He probably thought it was terrible but couldn't stop watching
The Gregory peck info is hilarious.
I saw ice station zebra when I was 6. The only part I really remember is the one with the gas tank of the car.
My father took me to see it in the theater. I was the typical bitchy kid driving Pops nuts because I probably thought it was a Zebra movie. I walked out of the theater with dad some fifty years ago loving every moment of it; the submarine crashing thru ice, Rock Hudson, James Brown and I was freaked out by that intense English guy who in my adulthood learned was the great Patrick McGoohan. That's why HH could not get enough of it.
No, no, no; The Western episode of The Prisoner is called "Living in Harmony " and McGoohan's in pretty much every scene. "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" is the one where he gets his mind swapped with another secret agent because The Village want to find the bloke who invented the technology. The whole plot was contrived to allow him to bugger off to MGM Hollywood for a few weeks (Ironically, The Prisoner's interiors were shot at the old MGM-British Studios, Boreham Wood).
Cybjon The title and "High Noon" score also make it a "western" episode, as well as the one designed to allow McGoohan to shoot "Zebra" as he identified: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Forsake_Me_Oh_My_Darling
Yes, "Do not forsake me, oh my darling" is the body swap episode of The Priz, not the western one, thank you for pointing that out (even if the title comes from a western song, there's nothing else western about the story). Be seeing you 👌
howard hughes loved this movie because all his technology is showcased in it
I watched this movie in 1968 and it was a popular yet low rated by critics film.
I LOVE this movie!!!!!
Re-watched it last night and while it is very competently made (with good casting of Hudson and McGoohan) it does suffer from obvious studio stand-in for locations footage. It just drains life and grittiness out of the last hour to be on a studio back lot, as well as the confrontation with the Russian paratroopers occurring in far too small a phyiscal space. The submarine miniature looks great (apart from one shot of the screws), Legrand's music is very effective. I would have liked one final scene with Hudson and McGoohan on the sub at the end. The info on the teletype machine could have been given to McGoohan as dialogue and he could have cynically suggested how the superpowers would have glossed over what happened as co-operation for a mercy mission of rescue. I do have one question though: exactly how does McGoohan realise that Borgnine and not Browne is the traitor. This seems rushed over in the film.
Rock had at least one great line in which he punks McGoohan..."We're on a first name basis...mine is Captian." Heh...
I use this when I substitute teach. "My first name is Mister."
It's the Migs that made this movie memorable. Cheap SFX or not.
That is what people may age remember. The MIGs models flying over the pole full after burner.
. BTW Splicing the live shot of F 4 Phantoms in was bizarre, even given the times. If the Red Air Force was asked in 1967, they may have even given MGM footage of some sort of Soviet Aircraft to use instead of F 4s Please Comrade use proper Soviet Footage, don't use F4 to be MIG 21 or SU 7. Audience will laugh at American Special Effect
This one's for you H.H.!!!!
I saw this in Cinerama, downtown Chicago 1968. At that time, in that context, this was a pretty kick-ass flick. The studio was apparently fresh out of Mig-21s (a front line Com Bloc fighter at the time), so the model Migs worked reasonably well by the FX standards of the day. We were worried about war with the Soviet boogie men back then and this movie had a scary, up to date feel to it. The acting is all good but it was a stretch to watch McHale as a commie back then.
I think the movie works well. Patrick McGoohan is great but the confrontation between Borgnine and Brown is genuinely unsettling.
Try watching the film on prescription medication. Then you'll understand why Hughes was so obsessed with this movie..
Howard Hughes has good taste. It's a sensational movie. Stuff went on in the real Cold War that makes this work of fiction seem like an average Tuesday.
I took a trip to ICE STATION ZEBRA II on a breaker from hell, so did 579
I came home from my date on a Saturday night 1992 and caught this movie half way through. Loved the movie so much that the next day I rented the VHS movie and now I own the DVD. I don't think the movie did so great at the box office in 1968. The movie may have been ahead of it's time. The dialogue is great but the action is too few.
The book was better of course. The ending was different.
Read it one summer 50 years ago!
Stayed up ALL night reading the end.
I read this one between When Eight Bells Toll, and Bear Island!
McGoohan elevates everything he's in....even this clunker
It is NOT a clunker. I love this movie.
Has one swear in it to elevate to deserving a PG rating!
I saw it in 1969. It really did fall apart in the second half. I thought it was great up tothe intermission.
GREAT MOVIE GREAT ACTORS
great movie,don't pick faults,just enjoy.
Howard Hughs loved this film because it represented United States military boastfulness at the hight of the Cold War.
Where to begin? So much wrong info.
Ice Station Zebra was filmed on sound stages as well as on Lot Three of MGM on their huge outdoor water tank that has a 70 foot-high sky backing. Inside sound stages they’d have never heard Elvis’s playback nor on Lot Three. Clambake wrapped production in April of 1977. Ice Station Zebra began filming in June and wrapped in October. Elvis’s next feature, Stay Away Joe for MGM began filming right after Ice Station wrapped. I worked at MGM back in the 1960s.
Cinerama looks like IMAX warped in the sun? Give me a break! I’ve watched lots of IMAX shorts as well as features shown on an IMAX screen. None put me into the picture as did Cinerama. True, there was visible bending of lines if the camera panned up or down from the center axis. But the process was terrific. The join lines of the three panels were only noticeable if the images weren’t spectacular which they mostly were. I’m talking about true Cinerama filmed with three rolls of 35mm film 6 perfs high. Not the phony Cinerama that came later. I saw Ice Station Zebra at the Hollywood Cinerama Dome. It was projected in 70mm. The negative was razor sharp 65mm. The reason for the added 5mm’s on the print was to accommodate the six magnetic stripes carrying the six channel stereophonic soundtrack. Ice Station Zebra looked terrific up on the big screen.
As for the phony ice. Any movie taking place in an arctic environment that wasn’t shot on location looks equally phony. Some of the greatest classic films have shoddy sets. I thought the production achieved the right feel. I do agree the models of MIG fighters looked bad. But the sub model was done as well or better than any other submarine movie.
Rock Hudson did not walk up to Martin Ransohoff in the studio commissary and demand to be hired. Hudson had just ended his long tenure with Universal and was looking for a starring role for another studio. Upon learning the Peck decided not to do the film, Rocks agent contacted Ransohoff. Peck left the project because he felt his character lacked any depth.
Elvis was rehearsing for a concert movie at the time and the story was recounted in the LA Times that whenever they opened the soundstages, you could hear him. The year was 1967, not 1977 as you wrote. That was the reviewer's personal opinion about IMAX. There was no crystalized breath around the phony tundra and reviewers cited how fake everything looked. The story about Hudson approaching Martin Ransohoff is from "Rock Hudson, Friend of Mine" by Tom Clark who was the actor's publicist and was confirmed during an intro to the film by Ransohoff himself. Hudson said he wanted to be in the film, as Clark was lunching with him in the commissary to increase his visibility as the actor's recent films had failed before being dropped by Universal. Your age is showing. Where to begin? Start by citing sources as I've just done as opposed to your faulty, personal recollections based on personal biases
.
The "lobbying" by Hudson is mentioned here: th-cam.com/video/YkDkz4aECN8/w-d-xo.html. When was "Live a Little, Love a Little" shot on the lot?
Sorry, we misunderstood. "So much wrong info" was referring to your own.
Just read the acclaimed Rock Hudson biography by Mark Griffin which confirms all the information in the video, including Gregory Peck's umbridge taken at the rewrites. And Rock Hudson did swallow his pride and lobby for the part directly with the producer since he had just fired his agent. Everything you posted was wrong.
Look this movie was boring and it just sucked.Sturges lost his touch which happens with most directors.