War Movies Blog

Ice Station Zebra 1968 Cold War thriller

by Adam 'Frey' Barczynski, 27-11-2019 16:31
War Movies

During Cold War American nuclear submarine USS Tigerfish operating from Scotland is given a new mission. Commander James Ferraday is given unusual orders and he has to move out quickly, because the whole operation aims to reach the North Pole area before Soviets. This part of the orders seemed straightforward, but his crew will be accompanied by British intelligence officer, platoon of Marines and Russian civilian. The Russian, Boris Vaslov, seems very friendly, but at the same time he is very keen to see every little detail of the submarine. David Jones of MI6 is quite opposite - jumpy, suspicious, evasive about his own orders, but with power to give orders to the crew of Tigerfish. Their target is ice station Zebra, nearby place where military satellite have crashed and now they have to reach the location before Soviets will.

Classic Cold War era thriller based on Alistair MacLean novel is, just like most of his works, full of twists and mysterious elements - with each scene the story becomes more and more complicated and the parts the people play in this whole setting are more and more blurry. A must-see war movie!

Notes

• The submarine used in Ice Station Zebra was the USS Ronquil (SS-396) with her hull number repainted to 509.
• The film's story has similarities with the real life events, reported in the media in April 1959, of the Discoverer II experimental Corona satellite capsule that went missing and was recovered by Soviet intelligence agents after it crashed near Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean.
• The character of Marine Captain Leslie Anders (played by Jim Brown) does not appear in Alistair MacLean source novel of the same name.