Hell Below Zero (1954)

User Rating:

5.6/10   

Director:

Mark Robson

Writers:

Alec Coppel (screenplay)
Hammond Innes (novel)

Release Date:

15 January 1954 (Japan)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Drama | Romance

Plot:

Duncan Craig signs on a whaling ship, partly because his own business deal has fallen through, partly to help Judie Nordhall find her father...

Plot Keywords:

Whaling | Whaling Ship | Murder | Ship Crew | Skiing

Cast

Alan Ladd	...	Duncan Craig
Joan Tetzel	...	Judie Nordhal
Basil Sydney	...	Bland
Stanley Baker	...	Erik Bland, John's Son
Joseph Tomelty	...	Capt. McPhee, Kista Dan (Icebreaker)
Niall MacGinnis	...	Dr. Howe
Jill Bennett	...	Capt. Gerda Peterson, Whale Catcher 11
Peter Dyneley	...	Dan Miller, Swindler
Susan Rayne	...	Kathleen, Miller's Girl
Philo Hauser	...	Sandeborg (Man in Brig)
Ivan Craig	...	Larsen
Paddy Ryan	...	Manders, Erik's Henchman
Cyril Chamberlain	...	Factory Ship Radio Operator
Paul Homer	...	Kista Dan Radio Operator
Edward Hardwicke	...	Ulvik

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

West Germany:12 (nf) | Finland:K-16 | UK:U | USA:Approved (PCA #16578, General Audience) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Warwick Film Productions

Trivia:

When the film premiered in Hollywood in 1954, Alan Ladd gave a few mounted actual whale teeth to special guests on opening night. He was actually on the ship during some of the filming. The tooth "trophies" are highly collectible today. Each has a plaque identifying them as coming from the movie.

Hell Alan Is Above All This!

In all Alan Ladd films when Alan stood up everyone else immediately sat down. Why? Well, my son, he was more of a laddie in stature than even a lad. In those days there were Rules. If, heaven forbid, a leading man hadn't a hairy chest or was vertically challenged, the other male cast members were depilated [Clark Gable MOGAMBO] or either sat, or stood in holes [male & female in all Alan's pictures].

The Rules also stipulated that however macho [Rock Hudson], or articulate [James Dean] a leading man might appear, audiences regarded diminution as effeminate; this nancy distinction Hollywood felt firstly financially and secondly morally bound to cinematically correct. Regardless of history [Napoleon, Churchill] Hollywood knew best: A short man was short of something. At 5'6,' 'Tiny' Ladd seemed too short for a screen career.

A pot boiler like HELL BELOW ZERO is the best measure of an actor- where, as here, the producer was a crook [Cubby Broccoli, later owing Sean Connery a packet- one small talent robbing another], the name support non-existent, and the star makes or breaks. Ladd, a former radio actor, with screen presence and persona to die for, makes in this execrable Hammond Innes drivel.

Made in Britain [favourable currency exchange rates] ostensibly about whaling, it mutates to a British drawing room murder mystery with incomparable Britlish drabness- characters saying 'ken't' for 'can't' etc.

Promoted to skipper of a whaling hell-hole where every crewman is putatively vital, [Joseph Tomelty, ham and equally atrocious playwright, having been thankfully concussed], Ladd has time to go 'investigating,' predictably ending up on the only South Atlantic, Lillian Gish ice floe where breath is not emitted as steam.

But Ladd, on the inevitable downward spiral from SHANE, manages a coolness this refrigerated British turkey doesn't, and elucidates by example among Old Country antecedents that there is another way. One of the few great movie stars in the Hollywood firmament, no one noticed he was small at the time. Because, -Wallbridge - his middle name suggests and his talent confirms, he was a giant in 1950's Lilliput.