Monday, May 16, 2022

Ice Station Zebra

Ice Station Zebra is a 1968 Metrocolor Cold War era suspense and espionage film directed by John Sturges and starring Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, Ernest Borgnine, and Jim Brown. The screenplay is loosely based on Alistair MacLean's 1963 novel.

Both have parallels to real-life events that took place in 1959. The film was photographed in Super Panavision 70 and presented in 70 mm Cinerama in premiere engagements. The original music score is by Michel Legrand.

A satellite re-enters the atmosphere and ejects a capsule, which parachutes to the Arctic, near a British scientific weather station moving with the ice pack named Drift Ice Station Zebra, approximately 500 kilometres (320 mi) northwest of Station Nord, Greenland in the Arctic Ocean ice pack. A person approaches, guided by a homing beacon, while a second person secretly watches from nearby.

Immediately afterwards distress calls begin to be broadcast from Ice Station Zebra. Little can be wrung from them beyond that there was a fire and casualties in some sort of disaster. Commander James Ferraday, captain of the American nuclear attack submarine USS Tigerfish stationed at Holy Loch, Scotland, is ordered by Admiral Garvey in Naval Intelligence to rescue the survivors, outside the normal chain of command, with confirming orders through regular channels to follow.

The plot has parallels to events from April 1959 concerning Discoverer 2, a missing experimental US Corona satellite capsule that inadvertently landed near Spitsbergen, Norway, in the Arctic Ocean on April 13. It was believed to have been recovered by Soviet agents.

Thanks Frans

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