A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Ice Station Zebra (1968) Directed by John Sturges Screenplay by Douglas Heyes, Harry Julian Fink, and W.R. Burnett, based on the novel by Alistair MacLean Starring: Rock Hudson, Patrick MacGoohan, Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown John Sturges'  Ice Station Zebra , based on Alistair MacLean's novel and written by Douglas Heyes Harry Julian Fink, and W.R. Burnett, is a Cold War-era "restoring the balance of power" film.  It focuses on a mixed bag of Navy and Marine personnel, a Russian defector, and a mysterious British agent on a risky mission to the Arctic Circle to retrieve the contents of a crashed Soviet spy satellite's cameras.  On paper, this 1968 technothriller looks promising, considering it features a U.S. nuclear sub (the USS  Tigerfish ), a noteworthy cast (Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick MacGoohan, and ex-football great Jim Brown), and one of those race-the-Russians-to-the-gizmo plots that would later be the heart of such novels as...

Considering the success of director Robert Aldrich’s 1967 war-action film  The Dirty Dozen , it’s not surprising that MGM/United Artists – the studio which owned the film rights to E.M. Nathanson’s 1965 novel – decided to produce a sequel which would depict the further missions of Maj. Reisman (Lee Marvin), Sgt. Bowren (Richard Jaeckel) and their wily superior officer, Maj. Gen. Worden (Ernest Borgnine).  As anyone who is remotely familiar with how the film industry works, studios are usually owned and operated by very conservative (in the fiscal sense of the word) men and women who tend to focus on how to make movies economically while making huge profits from them. This point of view also means that studio heads and producers tend to prefer “safe bets” rather than take huge cinematic gambles which may hurt the profit line and even sink their studios.  Because sequels and franchises tend to be “safer bets” than truly innovative movies, Hollywood tends to take a property ...