Ice Station Zebra


Ice Station Zebra is a 1968 Metrocolor Cold War era suspense and espionage film directed by John Sturges and starring Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, Ernest Borgnine, and Jim Brown. The screenplay is by Alistair MacLean, Douglas Heyes, Harry Julian Fink, and W. R. Burnett, loosely based on MacLean's 1963 novel. Both have parallels to real-life events that took place in 1959. The film was photographed in Super Panavision 70 by Daniel L. Fapp and presented in 70 mm Cinerama in premiere engagements. The original music score is by Michel Legrand.

Plot

A satellite re-enters the atmosphere and ejects a capsule, which parachutes to the Arctic, approximately 320 miles northwest of Station Nord, Greenland in the Arctic Ocean ice pack. A person approaches, guided by a homing beacon, while a second person secretly watches from nearby.
Commander James Ferraday, captain of the American nuclear attack submarine USS Tigerfish stationed at Holy Loch, Scotland, is ordered by Admiral Garvey to rescue the personnel of a British scientific weather station moving with the ice pack named Drift Ice Station Zebra, however, this is a cover for the real mission.
British intelligence agent "Mr. Jones" and a U.S. Marine platoon join the Tigerfish while in dock. After setting sail, a Kaman SH-2 Seasprite helicopter delivers Captain Anders, a strict officer who takes command of the Marines, and Boris Vaslov, a Russian defector and spy, who Jones trusts. The submarine sails beneath the thick Artic pack ice but is unable to break through with its conning tower. Ferraday orders a torpedo launch to break a hole in the surface. However, when the inner torpedo hatch is opened, sea water rushes in flooding the compartment causing the submarine to nose dive. The boat is only saved shortly before reaching crush depth. After an investigation, Ferraday discovers that the torpedo tube was sabotaged. Ferraday suspects Vaslov, while Jones suspects Anders.
After an area of thin ice is detected, the Tigerfish breaks through to the surface. Ferraday, Vaslov, Jones, and the Marine platoon set out for the weather station in a blizzard. On arrival, they find the base almost burned to the ground and the scientists nearly dead from hypothermia. Jones and Vaslov start questioning the survivors about what happened.
Jones reveals to Ferraday that he's looking for an advanced experimental British camera which used an enhanced film developed by the Americans. The Soviets stole the technology and sent it into orbit to photograph locations of American missile silos. However, the satellite also recorded all the Soviet missile sites, as well. After a malfunction, it crashed near Ice Station Zebra in the Arctic. When Soviet and British agents arrived to recover the film capsule, the scientists were caught in the crossfire. Ferraday sets his crew to search for the capsule. Jones finds another tracking device but is knocked out by Vaslov, a Soviet double-agent and the saboteur. Anders confronts Vaslov and the two men fight before the dazed Jones shoots and kills the American Captain.
Tigerfish detects approaching Soviet aircraft. Ferraday lets Vaslov use the tracker to locate the ice-buried capsule. A large force of Soviet paratroopers arrive and demand the film. After Ferraday hands over the empty container, a brief firefight occurs when the deception is discovered. In the confusion, Vaslov tries to take the film but is wounded by Jones. Ferraday orders him to give the film to the Soviets. The canister is sent aloft by weather balloon for recovery by aircraft. Moments before it is taken, Ferraday activates his own detonator, destroying the film and denying either side the locations of the other's missile silos. The Soviet colonel concedes that both his and Ferraday's missions are effectively accomplished so leaves.
Tigerfish completes the rescue of the civilians. A teletype machine reports the news that the "humanitarian mission" has been an example of better cooperation between the West and the Soviet Union.

Cast

Development

The film rights to the 1963 novel were acquired the following year by producer Martin Ransohoff, who hoped to capitalize on the success of the 1961 blockbuster The Guns of Navarone by adapting another Alistair MacLean novel for the silver screen as a follow-up. He expected the film to cost around $5 million.
"Our aim is to produce films that are both interesting and commercial," said Ransohoff. "We are looking for stories that have something unique to say." Ransohoff's company, Filmways, had a deal with MGM who would provide finance.
Paddy Chayefsky, who had just written The Americanization of Emily for Ransohoff, was hired to write the script.
Navarone stars Gregory Peck and David Niven were initially attached to this film, with Peck as the sub commander and Niven as the British spy, plus Edmond O'Brien and George Segal in the other key roles and John Sturges to direct. Sturges was borrowed from The Mirisch Company.
Filming was set to begin in April 1965, but scheduling conflicts and United States Department of Defense objections over Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay, because they felt it showed "an unfair distortion of military life" that would "damage the reputation of the Navy and its personnel" delayed the start. A new script was commissioned.
In January 1967 MGM announced the film would be one of 13 movies it would make during the next year..

Casting

Due to scheduling conflicts, the original cast was no longer available when filming began in the spring of 1967. Rock Hudson had replaced Gregory Peck by February. After making four flop comedies in a row, Hudson was keen to change his image; he had just made Seconds and Tobruk and Ice Station Zebra was an attempt to continue this. In June 1967, Laurence Harvey and Patrick McGoohan joined the cast as the Russian agent and British agent, respectively. In July, Ernest Borgnine joined the cast, replacing Laurence Harvey. Other key roles were played by Tony Bill, who signed a five-picture contract with Ransohoff, and Jim Brown.
The cast also included Australian Olympic swimmer Murray Rose. There were no women in the cast. "It was the way Maclean wrote it," said Hudson.

Filming

Filming began in June 1967. The film was budgeted at $8 million. Principal photography lasted 19 weeks, ending in October 1967. By the time it was finished the cost had risen to $10 million.
Ice Station Zebra was photographed in Super Panavision 70 by Daniel L. Fapp. The fictional nuclear-powered submarine Tigerfish was portrayed in the movie by the Diesel-electric Guppy IIA submarine when seen on the surface. For submerging and surfacing scenes, the Diesel-electric Guppy IA was used, near Pearl Harbor. The underwater scenes used a model of a nuclear submarine. George Davis, head of the art department at MGM, spent two years researching the design for the submarine.
Second unit cameraman John M. Stephens developed an innovative underwater camera system that successfully filmed the first continuous dive of a submarine, which became the subject of the documentary featurette, The Man Who Makes a Difference.
During filming, Patrick McGoohan had to be rescued from a flooded chamber by a diver who freed his trapped foot, saving his life. As he was making his television series The Prisoner during principal photography in Ice Station Zebra, McGoohan had the episode "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" re-written to have the mind of his character transferred into the body of another character.

Release

Ice Station Zebra premiered at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles on October 23, 1968 and opened to the public the following day. The film was described as being "bombsville at the box office" only earning theatrical rentals of $4.6 million in the United States and Canada.
The escalating production costs of this film, along with The Shoes of the Fisherman at the same time, led to the transfer of MGM President Robert O'Brien to Chairman of the Board, though he resigned that position in early 1969, after both films were released and failed to recoup their costs.

Reception

Ice Station Zebra received mixed reviews from critics. It holds a 43% "Rotten" rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as "so flat and conventional that its three moments of interest are an embarrassment" and called it "a dull, stupid movie", expressing disappointment that the special effects did not, in his opinion, live up to advance claims.
Director John Carpenter asked, "Why do I love this movie so much?", saying it was a guilty pleasure.

Awards and nominations

Ice Station Zebra was nominated in two categories at the 41st Academy Awards, for Best Special Visual Effects and Best Cinematography.

Similar historical events

The plot has parallels to events from April 1959 concerning a missing experimental Corona satellite capsule that inadvertently landed near Spitsbergen, Norway, in the Arctic Ocean on April 13, which was believed to have been recovered by Soviet agents. In 2006, the United States National Reconnaissance Office declassified information stating that "an individual formerly possessing Corona access was the technical adviser to the movie" and admitted "the resemblance of the loss of the Discoverer II capsule, and its probable recovery by the Soviets" on Spitsbergen Island. The story has parallels with the CIA's Project COLDFEET, which took place in May–June 1962. In this operation, two American officers parachuted from a CIA-operated Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress to an abandoned Soviet ice station. They were picked up three days later by the B-17 using the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system.
The attempted sinking of the submarine is based on the loss of the Royal Navy submarine in Liverpool Bay in 1939. The drip cock was blocked on the newly built Thetis by fresh paint, which led to the rear cap being opened while the bow cap was already open to the sea. Water entered at the rate of one ton per second and Thetis sank with the loss of 98 lives. In the movie, the drip cock was blocked with epoxy glue.