Ice Station Zebra was not exactly a huge success in its day, but it did have one major fan in reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. So much so that he would call the Las Vegas television station under his ownership and ensure that it was playing whenever he wanted it to, which in effect meant over a hundred times. What's ironic about that is that if he had lived into the eighties and beyond, he need not have bothered requesting it because the film is surely playing somewhere in the world at each minute of the day, and indeed there are those who follow Hughes' lead and watch it just about every time it airs.
While the film represents the work of some extremely talented people-the special effects are often stunning, the actors are uniformly outstanding, and the underwater and second-unit photography are of the highest order-it is simply too long. Any movie longer than ninety minutes really needs to earn its length, and this one does not. Some of the longest movies-Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, The Leopard-truly justify every minute of their running time by never slackening the pace and never being less than transfixing at every moment.
Ice Station Zebra is only intermittently attention-grabbing and would have made for an exhilarating thriller at a slim ninety minutes, but the epic scale of a less-than-epic story, combined with an overture and entr'acte, drive the movie right up to the edge of tolerability. Yet, for better or worse, this is how movies like this were being made in 1968.
While the film represents the work of some extremely talented people-the special effects are often stunning, the actors are uniformly outstanding, and the underwater and second-unit photography are of the highest order-it is simply too long. Any movie longer than ninety minutes really needs to earn its length, and this one does not. Some of the longest movies-Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, The Leopard-truly justify every minute of their running time by never slackening the pace and never being less than transfixing at every moment.
Ice Station Zebra is only intermittently attention-grabbing and would have made for an exhilarating thriller at a slim ninety minutes, but the epic scale of a less-than-epic story, combined with an overture and entr'acte, drive the movie right up to the edge of tolerability. Yet, for better or worse, this is how movies like this were being made in 1968.