La grande débâcle

This film begins with a young writer by the name of "Jean Williams" (Beverly Roberts) working on a novel about the Alaskan wilderness while living with an Eskimo tribe in a remote village. Although she is quite content with her present circumstances, one troubling bit of concern involves a pack of wild dogs and wolves which are terrorizing the area and killing off all of the reindeer which the Eskimos rely on for their food. So much so that they all decide to leave their village one morning in search of better hunting grounds--leaving her all alone in her cabin. And because of this, the wild dogs quickly begin to advance toward the village in search of whatever they can find. It's at this time that a fur trapper named "Gaston Rogers" (Richard Arlen) appears and offers to help her evacuate with him on his dog sled. To that effect, although she doesn't particularly like Gaston, she agrees to go with him. Making things more difficult, however, is the fact that several other animals also follow them--with the worst one being a wild dog named Swift Lightning which has a reputation for being excessively vicious. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that, although some people might assume this film is a cheap knockoff of the more popular "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London, the fact of the matter is that it is based primarily on another novel titled "Swift Lightning-A Story of Wildlife Adventure in the Frozen North" by James Oliver Curwood. So, they are completely different in that respect. Even so, it does feature a number of certain similarities due in large part to the overall location. That being said, although I don't consider this film to be bad necessarily, if I had I had a choice to watch this movie or the 1935 version of "The Call of the Wild", I think I would take the latter since it had better cinematography and acting. But that's just me. In any case, it passed the time fairly well, and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

Lyle Talbot and Richard Arlen were good actors. They both made a few major pictures, such as "Three on a Match" and "Wings". But they also both made a ton of cheap and crappy B-movies...and Talbot even starred in the god-awful "Plan 9 From Outer Space". So, when I saw it was a B-movie with BOTH of them starring in it, I knew it had to be incredibly bad...sight unseen.

The film consists mostly of stock footage (a LOT of stock footage) strung together with a few studio-bound scenes as well. The sum effect is pretty cheap...even for a B. The story is set in the frozen north and concerns a wolf infestation that threatens to eat up the game...and leave the natives hungry. Along for the ride are a plucky white lady and a talking crow. Ironically, the B-movie I watched just before this was, believe it or not, all about a detective searching for a talking crow ("Find the Blackmailer")!

So is it any good? Of course not! It has a talking crow and that never is a good thing! Plus, while it might work if you use a little stock footage....but about 40% of the film appears to be exactly this! Also, while plucky and determined women are a good thing in real life, in the movie she really just seems headstrong and stupid...insisting on wintering over with the locals while they face starvation and have no food to share. Huh??? Overall, cheap and dull....and those are probably two of the nicer things I can say about the film!!

Three years after 20th Century Fox made a great film from Jack London's Call Of The Wild, Republic made this pale imitation of another story of passions in the frozen north in Call Of The Yukon. Jack London set a mighty high standard in these kinds of adventure novels which this one really did not meet cinematically.

Richard Arlen plays a rugged trapper who like several of the Inuit is fleeing the country as a pack of wolves has pretty much devastated the wild game around there. Not because of the lack of game to trap, but because those wolves are ready to feast on some human meat if hungry enough. Not ready to flee is Beverly Roberts who's a novelist looking for solitude to write her next book which she's decided will be a story in that locale. Arlen packs her along unwillingly and he's most unwilling to take along a menagerie that consists of her talking bird, two bear cubs and a collie who is grieving for his master.

Without getting too much into the particulars there is a human and animal story played out at the same time. That collie develops a yen for the leader of the wolf pack, a half dog half wolf. Despite the attentions later on of a fine St. Bernard. That St. Bernard belongs to Lyle Talbot who is the sweetheart of Roberts who has come up to rescue her himself. I'm not spilling how the human or the animal passions play out here.

Some interesting sequences of the frozen north worked into this film, but it's a B Republic feature so what might have been a good film from one of the big studios is just a routine programmer from Republic.

It has potential, but too bad Jack London wasn't the screenwriter.

Call Of The Yukon is a low-grade film from a cheap studio. The acting is unbelievable and the plot does very little to sustain one's interest. In fact I'd say the canine performers add more to the film than the humans. Yet if you look past this then you may perhaps enjoy the film simply for its location shots of the frozen north and its depiction of wildlife, if that's your kind of thing.

The one thing that I thought was clever in the writing was how the behaviour of the dogs in the film reflect the attitudes of the main characters. But, this did little to save what was really just a hackneyed attempt at an adventure film. I was so grateful when this cheesy and sloppily chopped together film ended. And not a minute too soon...

My first thought was "what's with the name?" When I hear "The Yukon," I think of the Yukon Territory, which is in Canada. This was set in Alaska. But then I remembered that a portion of the Yukon River is in Alaska, so I'll grant that one. Still, what we have here is a very, very bad movie.

It looks grainy and cheap. Maybe it's grainy because of age, but that doesn't explain the cheap part - and lots of movies made in the 1930's have stood up very, very well. This one doesn't. The acting is dull and lifeless for the most part, and really for a significant chunk of the film,. this seems more interested in being a cutesy animal film, with a talking crow and bear cubs playing, with a musical score that more often than not really didn't seem appropriate to what was supposed to be a 1930's version of an action-adventure.

The story revolves around Jean and Gaston (Beverly Roberts and Richard Arlen) trying to find their way out of the Alaskan wilderness and having to deal with a pack of wild dogs while doing so. Meanwhile, a domestic collie named Firefly becomes a mate to the leader of the wild pack. The story of the dogs really parallelled what became the point of the last 20 minutes or so of the film, as Jean is forced to choose between the rough and tumble Gaston and the civilized and cultured Hugo (Lyle Talbot) - because Firefly has to choose between life as a wild dog and life with humans. OK. That was pretty obvious once Gaston and Hugo got into their fight over Jean. But that one point that worked really can't do anything to save this. It truly is a dreadful movie. (1/10)