Film is Pwn

Ice Station Zebra is a gem of a cold war spy movie.

Based on a novel by Alistair MacLean (author of Guns of Navarone), the film is a thoroughly entertaining yarn from beginning to end.  Most MacLean’s work is that way; the man knew how to tell a good story.

Zebra begins with a satellite crashing from orbit to the North Pole, and we witness a hooded figure retrieve the satellite with yet another hooded figure watching from hiding. It’s the last we see of these two people, though we find out exactly who they were and what they were up to in the second half of the film. It’s called “intrigue,” people!

Shortly thereafter, a U.S. submarine commander named Ferraday (Rock Hudson) is ordered to begin a top-secret rescue mission of a scientific expedition in the Pole, Ice Station Zebra, and there we have our title.  Ferraday is given little information on the nature of the assignment, but when he sees whom the orders originated from he tells his superior: “All right, sir, I’m impressed. Not enlightened, but impressed.”

The station is emitting a distress beacon, though clearly this is not a mere rescue mission. Ferraday has orders to take on a number of guests, including an enigmatic, British spy called Jones (Patrick McGoohan) who Ferraday must comply with in every area but the safety of the submarine; an affable, Russian defector named Boris (what else?) working for the good guys (Ernest Borgnine); and a squad of Marines led by tough-as-nails Capt. Anders (Jim Brown), who is picked up in transit.

We soon learn the Russians are racing toward the desolate, icy wasteland to retrieve the satellite as well.  And, as is seemingly required in a MacLean film, we discover that someone on board is a saboteur (the saboteur theme appears in other MacLean books-to-film Breakheart Pass, Guns of Navarone, and Where Eagles Dare). The suspect list is pretty low, as there are really only four principal characters, and it’s obviously not the sub commander Ferraday, so it’s either the British spy, the American Marine, or the Russian defector.

The saboteur damages the sub, takes the life of a crewmember, and remains undetected. The British spy, Jones, tells Ferraday exactly how the sabotage was done, causing the dubious sub Commander to comment: “All of a sudden you know a whole . . . lot about submarines.” Jones’ retort is a classic: “I know how to wreck them, and I know how to lie, steal, kidnap, counterfeit, suborn, and kill. That’s my job. I do it with great pride.”

When Ferraday does get Jones to reveal the nature of the mission, Jones tells him why retrieving the satellite, sent up by the Russians, is so critical: “The Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists.”

The lengthy finale sees the truth about what went wrong at Ice Station Zebra as well as a tense, Mexican standoff with the Russians and the revelation of the saboteur, which I won’t spoil.

Ice Station Zebra is a really fun movie.  On the downside, it showcases some rather laughable special effects by today’s elevated standards.  The satellite crash landing scene is poor, the submarine scenes are passable at best, and the North Pole set is only one peg above the sets used on the original Star Trek series.  I was honestly surprised to learn that forty years ago Zebra garnered an Academy Award nomination for those same special effects. How times have changed.

Still, this is not a special effects vehicle.  Ice Station Zebra is propelled by the story, the suspense, and the performance of Patrick McGoohan as Jones. McGoohan absolutely steals the movie, in my opinion. Brown and Hudson are good, and Borgnine, an Academy Award winner, sort of hams it up as an overly friendly Russian. Borgnine’s Russian accent makes me glad that Sean Connery didn’t bother to try one in another cold-war submarine film based on a bestseller, the Hunt For Red October.

But as far as McGoohan, he oozes cool and confidence, at one moment affable and in another intense, at all times unflappable.  The scene where Jones loses his temper and slams his fist on a table, I was taken aback, though I had seen the film previously.  McGoohan is one of the few actors who has such a mesmerizing voice that I could listen to him talking about almost anything.

For those who don’t know, McGoohan came to prominence staring in British TV shows as a spy in both Danger Man and the Prisoner (I absolutely adore the Prisoner – it will be the singular subject of a blog in the near future).  McGoohan actually turned down the role of James Bond before it went to Roger Moore in the 70s.  Perhaps one reason McGoohan didn’t want to take on the role of Bond is that McGoohan apparently is not a fan of womanizing characters – in Danger Man and the Prisoner he did not allow either of his characters to have casual sexual relationships, not even in implication.  That’s a pleasant change of pace, in my opinion, and a guy with those standards (who has been married to one woman for fifty-seven years, as of this writing) probably wouldn’t feel too comfortable in the shoes of Bond, the world’s most promiscuous spy.

One interesting, non-McGoohan related note on the appeal of Ice Station Zebra that I found researching on imdb.com: “In the era before VCRs, Howard Hughes would call the Las Vegas TV station he owned and order them to run a particular movie. Hughes so loved (Ice Station Zebra so much) that it aired on his Las Vegas station over 100 times.”

So, to sum up Ice Station Zebra, if it’s good enough for an eccentric, paranoid billionaire who collected his own urine, it’s certainly good enough for you to check out once! (If that doesn’t appear as a blurb on the back-cover of the next DVD release, I’ll be stunned.)

–Daniel J. Roos