Cinema Saturday: Ice Station Zebra

When I launched Cinema Saturday as a companion to Cinema Sunday, the idea was to focus on the following categories:

• Movies from the 21st century 
• Movies from the 1970's to the 1990's
• And some other 3rd thing.   

Today's movie is...  some other 3rd thing.

From 1968, we're gonna look at Ice Station Zebra.

While technically made in the 1960's, the film has a look, feel and even sound that makes it seem like a modern movie.   

It was also the favorite movie of notorious billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. 

More about that later.   

Our movie this week starts in...  SPACE!!!

A satellite falls from orbit and ejects a thingamabob that lands in the Arctic near a research station 300 miles north of Greenland. 

Commander James Ferraday, captain of the American nuclear attack submarine USS Tigerfish stationed off Scotland, is ordered to rescue the personnel of a British scientific weather station Ice Station Zebra.

The Tigerfish has to take on passengers for this mission.

• British intelligence agent "Mr. Jones"
• Boris Vaslov, a Russian defector and spy who Jones trusts
• And A U.S. Marine platoon including their very strict commanding officer,  Captain Anders 

Ferrady knows there's more going on here than a rescue mission and he's uneasy as hell about all these extra people on his submarine.  

Psst! It's really a mission to recover the thingamabob. 

Well, duh! 

The Tigerfish sails beneath the thick Arctic ice but can't break through with its conning tower.

Ferraday says to torpedo a hole through the ice. 

Except when the inner torpedo hatch is opened, sea water rushes in, causing the submarine to nose dive. 

The submarine is saved just short of reaching crush depth (for maximum drama). 

Ferraday discovers that the torpedo tube was sabotaged. 

Ferraday suspects Vaslov. 

Jones suspects Anders.

On one hand, we don't want it to be Vaslov. He's played by Ernest Borgnine and he's friendly and lovable with a sort of teddy bear quality about him.

But for it to be Anders, we're blaming the only black guy in the cast. 

Meanwhile, an area of slightly less thick ice is found and the Tigerfish can break through that. 

Ferraday, Vaslov, Jones, and the Marine platoon set out for the weather station in a blizzard. 

The base is almost burned to the ground and the scientists there either dead or dying from hypothermia. 

Jones reveals to Ferraday what the thingamabob is.  

It's a camera that has taken pictures of both American and Soviet missile sites and both sides want to get it before the other side blah blah blah. 

It's a thingamabob that everybody wants. 

And Vaslov is revealed as a Soviet double agent and the saboteur.

Damn it! No, not Ernest Borgnine!  

And he kills Anders so there goes... the black guy. 

And the Soviet Union shows up with a shit ton of troops who have parachuted in. 

Out on the ice, two armies are prepared to go to war over the thingamabob.

A war that Ferraday circumvents by blowing up the thingamabob.

And news agencies report that thanks to cooperation of the Soviet Union and the Americans, the  "humanitarian mission"  to rescue the scientist at Ice Station Zebra was a success.

Huzzah? 

So Ice Station Zebra has a very modern feel about it that belies it's origins as a 1960's film.  The look of the Tigerfish sub as it plies it's way underneath Arctic ice and crashes through the ice shelf is very realistic. The model work and effects are fantastic. 

The cinematography, especially of the underwater scenes and of the cold brutal environment of the Arctic science station, is beautiful to look at.  

Michel Legrand's soundtrack is powerful and moving. Below is a link to the film's overture.

There's also a healthy cynicism that is missing from earlier Hollywood films dealing with the military. Ferrady is trying to be the good soldier and follow orders but he's not one given to blind obedience and demands answers. And his pragmatic solution to keeping the thingamabob out of the hands of the Soviet Union also means keeping it out of the hands of the Americans. Orders be damned, Ferrady will not start a war and sacrifice his men to some East vs. West ideology.  

Ice Station Zebra was not popular when it was first released, losing a shit ton of money. 

But it captivated Howard Hughes.  

By the 1970's, the pioneering aviation billionaire was a hermit, living in a hotel penthouse in Las Vegas, collecting his urine in bottles and boxing his toenail clippings. 

Hughes owned a TV station in Las Vegas and he would use that TV station for his own personal film library. He would call 'em up, order up a movie and the station would drop whatever they were doing and run that movie. 

Over 100 times, that movie was Ice Station Zebra. 

Man, Howard Hughes really loved that movie. 

Well, it is a nifty little spy thriller of a movie that looks good and sounds good with some strong performances from Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, Ernest Borgnine and Jim Brown.

Tomorrow, it's more spy stuff as Cinema Sunday kicks off Alfred Hitchcock Month and I post about one of his earliest films, Foreign Correspondent.   

Our theme for next weekend's movie posts is "Creatures On the Loose" as Cinema Saturday kicks things off with...  Cocaine Bear!