By Richard Winters
My Rating: 4 out of 10
4-Word Review: Killer in the artic.
A group of scientists travel to a small island in the artic to study the effects of climate change. They’ve been instructed by Gerran (Richard Widmark), the leader of the expedition, who forbids anyone to go near the U-boat base, which are ships leftover from WWII, but Lansing (Donald Sutherland) whose father was a U-boat captain, decides to sneak off one day with his friend Judith (Barbara Parkins) to check it out. Along the way they get struck by an avalanche that kills Judith, and which Lansing is convinced was started by a mysterious man with a rifle. He goes to the location again the next day and is able to find the cave the ships are in via snorkeling. He comes upon evidence that someone else from the camp had already been there and soon more people from the group begin turning-up dead.
The film is based on the Allistair MacLean novel of the same name, which was published in 1971. Great care was put into the production to make it seem as authentic as possible. Producer Peter Snell wanted it filmed at a cold location because he desired a real looking the snowy landscape and stated that audiences “can tell styrofoam snow”, and since I’m originally from a northerly region I can attest to that myself and one of the things I really hate about movies that take place in cold places, but shot inside a film studio. However, they weren’t able to shoot it at the actual Bear Island, which is off the Norwegian coast, because they wanted to take advantage of the tax write-off that they would get by filming it in Canada and this in fact became the most expensive movie ever made in Canada up to that time.
While the film didn’t do well with either the critics, or the box office, there are some really cool scenes. I loved the bird’s eye views, especially the opening one of a man skiing all by himself amidst the otherwise barren, white landscape. The sequence between two snow scooters known as ‘The Caterpillar’, which are driven by Sutherland and Vanessa Redgrave, and two hydrocopters, which are maned by the bad guys, makes for a very unique and exciting chase over the frozen tundra. The collapsing of a giant radio tower and Sutherland getting involved in a bare knuckle fist-fight are also quite memorable.
The acting is good especially by Widmark who speaks in a German accent. I also liked Christopher Lee’s performance though for him he gets more captivating after his character gets injured and he lays dying. Vanessa Redgrave though is wasted. She speaks with a Nordic accent, which makes it somewhat interesting, but her character doesn’t have much to do and is just lead around by Sutherland and the forced romance between them is both annoying and ridiculous. You’d think someone who had just won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress just a year before would’ve had a better quality of parts to choose from though her outspoken politics may have had something to do with a more limited selection of offers making her feel that she had to take this one simply to stay busy.
The film’s fatal flaw though is that it doesn’t stay faithful to the book and makes many plot changes including having the group be scientists instead of a film crew like it had been done in the novel. This was director Don Sharp’s idea as he felt you couldn’t ‘make films about film units’, which I whole heartedly disagree. People working on movies have a far more eclectic personalities, ‘artsy types’ than scientists who are more matter-of-fact about things and tend to respond in a reserved manner. The characters are quite dull and there’s very little to distinguish them from the others. The viewer has no emotional investment in any of them and thus who gets killed, or even the identity of the killer becomes pointless and outside of the snazzy stunts it has no impact.
Spoiler Alert!
Having the killer turn-out to be Lawrence Dane was another disappointment as he had played villains many times before and his lurking eyes makes him almost a shoe-in for a bad guy and the first person you’d expect. Some creativity to the killer’s identity was desperately needed possibly even have it turn out to being Redgrave, or even Sutherland might’ve been a big enough surprise to make the rest of it seem worth it, but ultimately this is yet another example where too much attention was put into the effects and not enough in the character development.
My Rating: 4 out of 10
Released: November 1, 1979
Runtime: 1 Hour 58 Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Don Sharp
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Available: VHS, DVD (Region 0), DVD-R
Scopophilia 