I've read all of Alistair MacLean's novels, most of them multiple times...this was almost as bad as the job they did on ICE STATION ZEBRA...the musical score was noisy and sounded as if it had been recorded on a battery-operated cassette tape recorder, and what a waste of some great actors and actresses...my main problem with the film is how disjointed it is from scene to scene...one minute people are stranded on a glacier, the next they are driving into town...and how did those two Hitler-youth Nazis get all that stuff (I'll let you find out "what stuff?") up that narrow shaft?! Even my dog wouldn't believe it. Believe this: the novel is better. Films that MacLean wrote the screenplay for are much truer to the original story lines. Fortunately, this film did not end the careers of Regrave, Sutherland, Bridges, and Widmark...
Review of Bear Island
