Ice Cold in Alex (1958) on Netflix
Approved19582h 10mAdventureDramaWar
In Tobruk, Captain Anson commands a British motor ambulance company. As the Afrika Korps closes in, he, MSM Tom Pugh and two nursing sisters drive for Alexandria in an ambulance called Katy.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.7/107,558 votes
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Trailer
Plot summary
Captain Anson drinks too much and is worn down by battle fatigue while in command of a British motor ambulance company at Tobruk. When the Afrika Korps closes on the port, the unit is told to withdraw toward Alexandria. Anson, MSM Tom Pugh and nursing sisters Diana Murdoch and Denise Norton are cut off from the rest in an Austin K2/Y ambulance that they call Katy. On the road they fall in with Captain van der Poel, an Afrikaner officer who persuades Anson to let him travel with them by offering three bottles of gin. Minefields, a broken suspension spring and the Qattara Depression lie between the party and the British lines. Anson's own aim is a cold lager in Alexandria.
Cast
- Basil Hoskinsas C.M.P Lieutenant (Alexandria)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ice Cold in Alex (1958)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During the scene in which the ambulance rolls backwards down a hill narrowly missing her, Sylvia Syms said the actors assumed a hawser would stop the vehicle if anything went wrong, but there was none; she was "pretty sure" John Mills, Anthony Quayle and Harry Andrews angrily upbraided director J. Lee Thompson over the risk.
- The final scene, in which John Mills's Captain Anson finally gets his lager, was reportedly filmed weeks after the rest of the film, at Elstree. Real lager had to be used to "look right", and Mills drank numerous glasses until the shots were finished, ending up "a little 'heady'" by the end.
- The producers planned to shoot the desert location work in Egypt, but the Suez conflict forced them to switch to Libya, where filming began on 10 September 1957.
- Richard Todd said he turned down a lead role in Ice Cold in Alex because he felt the story was far fetched and he was getting tired of military roles.
- Scenes from the film appeared in a late-1980s TV campaign for Holsten Pils, which mixed original footage with new material starring Griff Rhys Jones; rival Carlsberg retaliated by lifting the shot of Mills downing his lager and declaring "Worth waiting for!"
- Sylvia Syms said the film used Danish Carlsberg because the characters could never have been seen drinking a German lager while Britain and Germany were at war. The original novel's beer was Rheingold, American despite its German name.
- The quicksand sequence was filmed in an ice-cold artificial bog in an English studio, which was "very tough" on Anthony Quayle and John Mills.
