Bear Island (1979)    United Artists/Action-Thriller    RT: 102 minutes    Rated PG (language, violence)    Director: Don Sharp    Screenplay: David Butler and Don Sharp    Music: Robert Farnon    Cinematography: Alan Hume    Release date: January 16, 1981 (Philadelphia, PA)    Cast: Donald Sutherland, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee, Lloyd Bridges, Barbara Parkins, Lawrence Dane, Patricia Collins, Bruce Greenwood, Michael J. Reynolds, Nicholas Cortland, August Schellenberg, Candace O’Connor, Joseph Golland, Richard Wren, Mark Jones, Hagen Beggs, Michael Collins, Robert Stelmach, Terry Waterhouse.    Box Office: N/A

Rating: **

 I stand by my assertion that bad movies from back in the day are made better by today’s bad movies. Let’s take a look at Bear Island, a British-Canadian production featuring an all-star cast and a screenplay adapted from an Alistair MacLean novel. Consider that last part for a moment. Some of the author’s novels- e.g. The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare and Breakheart Pass- have successfully been translated to the big screen. Not the case with Bear Island which, to be accurate, is only loosely based on the book.

 Made in 1979, it was the most expensive Canadian movie at the time with a price tag of $12 million. It didn’t open in US theaters until January ’81. I went with my dad and little brother to a Sunday matinee at the City Line Theater. I didn’t really want to see it as the reviews were significantly less than praising. I tried talking Dad into seeing Nine to Five instead, but his mind was made up, his rationale being that it couldn’t be all that bad with MacLean’s name attached. Well, parents make mistakes too. Bear Island started out pretty good, but eventually lost momentum becoming a turgid, muddled mess of an action-thriller.

 Bear Island involves a UN scientific expedition comprised of scientists from different countries to study climate change on remote, snow and ice-covered Bear Island (north of Norway). At least that’s the official story. Because it’s Alistair MacLean, we already know most of them aren’t who they claim to be. Like marine biologist Frank Lansing (Sutherland, Eye of the Needle) who’s really interested in finding out what became of his father. You see, his father was the commander of a German U-boat that disappeared shortly before the war ended. As it so happens, Bear Island is the former site of a Nazi U-boat base. Guess whose U-boat Lansing finds?

 So let me cut right to the chase and tell you what everybody is really after, a huge shipment of Nazi gold. Who else wants it? There are a couple of Nazis unhappy about how the war turned out. The head guy (or gal) is code-named “Zelda”. Christopher Lee (The Curse of Frankenstein) plays a Pole suspected of being KGB. Richard Widmark (Kiss of Death) plays expedition leader Professor Otto Gerran, a Norwegian once suspected a Nazi sympathizer, but since cleared even though a cloud of suspicion remains. Why is he so adamantly against anybody radioing for help? Lloyd Bridges (Airplane) plays an American who seems to know what’s going on. Vanessa Redgrave (Julia) plays the Norwegian psychiatrist who becomes Lansing’s love interest. Any one (or more than one) could be behind the mysterious accidents claiming the lives of other expedition members.

 At 13, what struck me about Bear Island was how violent it was for a PG movie. It opens with a hapless skier being run over by a snowmobile. Over the next 102 minutes, a woman is buried alive in an avalanche, another gets it with an ice axe and somebody is killed with a flare gun. There’s a rough, prolonged fist fight, an explosion and a snowmobile crash. I should have loved it, but I didn’t.

 The main problem with Bear Island is one of pacing. With everything that’s going on, it’s hard to believe it’s slow and boring. That’s on top of the hammy acting and terrible fake accents. On the upside, Bear Island has some great scenery and cinematography. The cold, snowy locations (it was actually shot in British Columbia and Alaska) make for a nice dramatic backdrop. The scenes in the underground caverns with the long dormant U-boats and their skeleton crews (literally skeletons!) are pretty cool. The movie has some great sets.

 The idea of an all-star cast is always cool even if the overall performances aren’t all that good. Bear Island is one of those movies that call for a poster with the actors’ faces in little boxes below the title. It has atmosphere and action, but fails to generate much in the way of suspense or tension. It’s a bad movie, no question about it. But I don’t hate it. It is watchable albeit barely. It’s definitely more bearable than today’s bad movies. It doesn’t resort to CGI and noise to compensate for the areas in which it’s sorely lacking.

 It goes without saying that Bear Island flopped at the box office losing every single penny of its budget. It was also the last time anybody attempted a big budget adaptation of one of MacLean’s novels (at least for the big screen). As bad as it is, I’ll go ahead and call it a semi-guilty pleasure.

 Here’s what I want to know. Virtually all sources list the movie’s running time as 118 minutes yet all existing copies are only 102 minutes. What happened to the 16 unaccounted minutes? That’s the real mystery.