Ice Station Zebra | |
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Theatrical release poster by Howard Terpning
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Directed by | John Sturges |
Produced by | James C. Pratt Martin Ransohoff John Calley |
Screenplay by |
Douglas Heyes Harry Julian Fink W. R. Burnett |
Based on |
Ice Station Zebra 1963 novel by Alistair MacLean |
Starring |
Rock Hudson Ernest Borgnine Patrick McGoohan Jim Brown |
Music by | Michel Legrand |
Cinematography | Daniel L. Fapp |
Edited by | Ferris Webster |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date
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Running time
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148 minutes |
Language | English |
Budget | $8 million |
Box office | $4.6 million |
Ice Station Zebra is a 1968 Metrocolor Cold War era suspense and espionage film directed by John Sturges, starring Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, Ernest Borgnine, and Jim Brown. The screenplay by Alistair MacLean, Douglas Heyes, Harry Julian Fink, and W. R. Burnett is loosely based upon MacLean's 1963 novel of the same name. 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.
A satellite reenters the atmosphere and ejects a capsule which parachutes to the Arctic, coordinates 85°N 21°W (approx 320 miles WNW of Nord, Greenland, in the Arctic Ocean ice pack). During an ice storm, a figure soon approaches, guided by a homing beacon, while a second person secretly watches from nearby.
The scene shifts to Commander James Ferraday (Rock Hudson), captain of the U.S. nuclear attack submarine USS Tigerfish (SSN-509), stationed at Holy Loch, Scotland. He is ordered by Admiral Garvey (Lloyd Nolan) to rescue the personnel of Drift Ice Station Zebra, a British civilian scientific weather station moving with the ice pack. However, the mission is actually a cover for a highly classified assignment.