Estación polar Zebra

I don't know how I missed this film for 40 years, but I corrected that mistake.

Not a blockbuster, with the only outstanding features being the cinematography and special effects, it is nevertheless a taut cold war thriller.

The interplay between Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine. Patrick McGoohan, and to a lesser extent, Jim Brown made this a film where you are constantly focused on who is the good guy, and who is the bad.

Long at 148 minutes, it never lags. There is a very good reason why Alistair MacLean novels make good pictures,

Commander James Ferraday (Rock Hudson), the captain of the nuclear submarine USS Tigerfish, receives the assignment to get three persons to North Pole: the civilian David Jones (Patrick McGoohan), the Russian deserter Boris Vaslov (Ernest Borgnine) and the marine Capt. Leslie Anders (Jim Brown). Their secret mission is to recover an American film from an English camera in a Russian spy satellite, which felt close to the Ice Station Zebra. The persons who work in the station are not responding to the radio call and nobody knows what might have happened with them. Along the voyage of USS Tigerfish, there is some sabotage on board meaning that probably one of the new passengers is a Russian spy. A tense and cynical end finishes a long but attractive story. Although the cold war is gone in the present days, this movie is still a good film. Rock Hudson and Patrick McGoohan have a great performance. My vote is seven.

After re-discovering Patrick McGoohan, I decided to give this film a try. I had heard the title mentioned for years, but had no clue what it was about.

The overall look of the film was rather impressive. I appreciated most of the technical aspects. You really feel like you would NOT want to be stationed on(in?) a submarine! The special effects weren't bad for 1968. The soundtrack is good as well.

When you have Borgnine and Jim Brown in a movie, you automatically think in terms of "The Dirty Dozen". They both did better in that film...

I have never been at all impressed with Rock Hudson, and found his acting to be rather wooden here. He does a good job with the regulation "sub speak", but, for example, in the post-flooding scene with McGoohan, he is very obviously not as impressive an actor as the Englishman (ok ok, McGoohan was born in the US to Irish parents, but they moved back to Ireland, then to England).

In fact, I (and so many others) feel McGoohan steals the movie. Of course, he had many years experience playing "secret agents", so this film may have been a cake-walk for him... just speak a bit more and trade in a black & white blazer for a warm parka! (He did, in fact have to take time off from filming "The Prisoner" to make Zebra.) His character's comments regarding bullet velocity in cold climates is a fan-favorite, along with "the coffee cup" and post-flood explanation. I swear the other actors were just standing there, watching his performance, forgetting the cameras were rolling.

In short, if you like submarines, spies, and mild action, you should like Zebra.

I first saw this film when it was released in 1968 at the Summit Cinerama theater in Detroit, and it was a fantastic movie going experience. I think the first thing that draws you into this film is the rousing score by Michel Legrand and the marvelous cinematography. The engrossing story moves along at a good pace aided by some very intelligent and witty dialogue. A superb cast of seasoned professionals including Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown and especially a very suave and droll Patrick MacGoohan create fully realized characters that act and react in very real human emotions to some extremely tense and suspenseful situations. The next time you see this film in the TV listings, be sure to check it out and I think you will find it superior to many films of the same genre that have been made since. One thing I find puzzling is the fact that this classic has not been released on DVD, and I only hope it is very soon.

Big-budget, all-star, action-packed adventure about an American submarine sent to the North Pole to retrieve a downed satellite which contains a roll of film. The Russians want it as badly as the Americans because the film contains high-orbit pictures of BOTH country's missile sites.

Rock Hudson is the sub commander, Patrick McGoohan is the cynical secret agent with a dry wit (a roll he made famous in two famous British TV shows, `The Secret Agent' and `The Prisoner'), Jim Brown is a hard-nosed Marine captain, and Earnest Borgnine is a Russian defector working with McGoohan and the Americans to retrieve the valuable film.

The special effects of the Russian jets could have been much better, even in 1968. But the fantastic exterior arctic sets create a stylized North Pole as appealing as the sets of Altair 4 in `Forbidden Planet'. Sure they don't look `real' -- but that's doesn't mean they don't look good. And brother, they sure look BIG. Furthermore, these sets don't just sit there, they actually DO neat stuff: hugh blocks of ice converge and threaten to crush the sub's conning tower, and the conning tower raises and lowers through cracks in the ice!

Dynamite score by Michel LeGrand. Sterling screenplay by Douglas Heyes, riddled with sharp dialogue that the fine cast delivers perfectly (I love it when McGoohan tells Hudson that the film invented by America's German scientists was put into the camera invented by Britain's German scientists and sent up in the satellite invented by the Russian's German scientists. Funny.

Based on Alistair MacLean's best-selling novel. A genuine techno-thriller that predated Tom Clancy's work. And it was originally released at Cinerama theaters! Gotta love it . . .