Ice Station Zebra (1968) review

Commander Ferraday (Rock Hudson) is given the order by Admiral Garvey (Lloyd Nolan) to take the USS Tigerfish, a nuclear submarine, to Ice Station Zebra where there's been a disaster and rescue any survivors - there to accompany him are British spy "David Jones" (Patrick McGoohan), Captain Anders (Jim Brown) and Russian defect Boris Vaslov (Ernest Borgnine) ... although there may be a saboteur on board.  It does little to make the underwater scenes at all interesting - the all-male cast just stares at charts, gauges and monitors - and it only springs to life ever so briefly when something chaotic happens (water floods the vessel, someone falls into a crevice) or the Big Bad Russians show up to look for some MacGuffin.  It's long, incomprehensible and the special effects have not held up over time, but it has its admirers: famously, billionaire Howard Hughes ordered a TV station he owned in Las Vegas to play it hundreds of times.  Personally, I think he did it to put people to sleep.