Product Description

John Sturges's adaptation of Alistair MacLean's novel stars Rock Hudson as submarine commander James Ferraday. When a weather-monitoring station near the North Pole is nearly destroyed by fire, he's ostensibly sent to find out what went wrong. But since he's been ordered to bring along Capt. Leslie Anders (Jim Brown) and a platoon of Marines, British agent David Jones (Patrick McGoohan), and Russian defector Boris Vaslov (Ernest Borgnine), he realizes he's being kept in the dark about the true nature of the mission. Eventually it becomes clear that the USS Tigerfish is in a race with a Russian sub to recover reconaissance film crucial to national defense that was being carried aboard a spacecraft that crashed near the polar ice cap. When the sub is sabotaged--causing it to sink perilously close to a depth that would lead to an explosion--it becomes clear that a double agent is on board, but Ferraday doesn't have enough evidence to arrest anyone. Although the film is often remembered as the one chosen for ad nauseam viewing by Howard Hughes, it's a well-made combination of action and suspense, boasting a fine score by Michel Legrand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3910 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2005-01-11
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 150 minutes

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

Customer Reviews

solid action flick..........but where's the DVD?
Ice Station Zebra is one of my favorite flims next Where Eagles Dare, The Green Berets, and The Great Escape. I.S.Z. begins when Navy submarine commander James Farraday (Rock Hudson) is asked to take a British agent (Patrick McGoohan) to a remote outpost known as Ice Station Zebra to find a downed Russian satilite that contain top secret photos of Western missile installations. Tagging along with Farraday is a tough no-nonsense Marine captain, brilliantly acted by Jim Brown, fresh from his role as a prisoner turned soldier in Dirty Dozen. Also tagging along is a defecting Russian played by Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine. And starring in a cameo in this picture is war movie veteran Lloyd Nolan who plays a U.S. admiral. This movie should have been nominated for Best Special Effects, Best Picture, Best Cinematgraphy, and for Best Sound Effects. I hope that this "lost" gem of a movie is released on DVD format. I wish they would release it in DVD. If you love action movies about the cold war, give this movie a try, I recemend it.

Solid Acting and Effective Production
At times a taut and effective thriller that seems the pattern for much of Tom Clancy's books, "Ice Station Zebra" has a fairly simple plot: a space capsule with top secret photographs crashes, prompting a race between the Soviets and Americans to recover it from the polar icecap. Yet, the tension is kept reasonably high, even as much of the movie is spent aboard the U.S. submarine carrying the recovery team. Rock Hudson is, well, rock solid as the submarine captain--cool, thoughtful, and easy-going, he plays well against the skulking but ironic British spy (a teriffic Patrick MacGoohan, essentially playing the same part he always does in the way only he seems able to) that may or may not be a saboteur. Viewers will recognize other familiar faces--Jim Brown and Ernest Borgnine among them--that root the film in the 60s, and the whole production--including the cinematography, special effects, and score by Maurice Jarre--are topnotch. The only real weaknesses to the film are the mystery of who is the double agent and an action ending that seems almost anticlimactic when compared to the genuine tension in the rest of the story. Still, it's a better espionage thriller than most of those found in theaters today.

Cold war drama warms up on DVD
One of the better cold war dramas produced during the 60's, "Ice Station Zebra" isn't exactly an action adventure; it's more of an action drama. Most of the "action" is the dramatic conflict between Commander Ferraday (Rock Hudson) and his guests Boris Vaslov (Ernest Borgnine)a former Russian spy who now works for British Intelligence, MI-6 secret agent "David Jones" (the wonderful Patrick McGoohan) and Marine Captain Anders (Jim Brown). A nasty ice storm brews at the North Pole. When Ice Station Zebra calls for help the Tigerfish is sent north to break through the ice to save the men stationed there. That's the cover story. The reality is that a satellite has crashed in the arctic tundra and must be recovered before a Russian expeditition gets to it.

The image quality is stellar on this first time release from Warner Brothers. There's hardly any analog or digital artifacts. While there's no commentary track we do get the original promotional featurette on the movie "The Man Who Makes a Difference" and it's actually pretty good at providing behind-the-scenes footage about the shooting of a real Navy submarine to be integrated with visual effects into the movie. The big attraction here is a wonderful 5.1 remix of the original soundtrack. While it's not as active as, say, a brand new movie, it sounds pretty darn good with better depth and expanded sound than any previous incarnation of the movie on home video.

This was originally shot in SuperPanavision and, atlhough this is a widescreen presentation much like "2001: A Space Odyssey". It's a huge improvement on the previously cropped versions that have floated around. The original Overture from the roadshow edition of the movie has been restored to this version with Michel Legrand's marvelous score. The intermission is also included, hence the 2 hour and 30 minute running time.

Patrick McGoohan took time away from shooting his series "The Prisoner" to make "Ice Station Zebra". Ironically he plays another secret agent. "David Jones" doesn't stray too far from John Drake the character he played in "Secret Agent Man" (aka "Danger Man in the UK)but McGoohan's clipped sarcastic delivery and unpredictabllity make him a stand out in the cast. Hudson's relaxed performance as the Commander provides a nice counter balance to McGoohan's intense one and provides a nice counter point to Borgnine's cagey Vaslov. The first half of the film is marvelous and, although it sags during the second half (for a lot of reasons) and the conclusion doesn't have the cinematic style of John Sturges' previous films ("The Great Escape" and "The Magnificent Seven")but, all in all, "Ice Station Zebra" still provides marvelous entertainment. The footage of the real submarine surfacing and going under the water looks marvelous.

Nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Cinematography and Best Special Visual Effects), "Ice Station Zebra" lost in both categories to "Romeo and Juliet" and "2001: A Space Odyssey". The visual effects that open the movie are still exceptionally good and wouldn't look out of place in Kubrick's film of the same year. That's ironic since MGM pulled "2001" from some theaters to premiere "Ice Station Zebra".