On the evidence of In the Tentacles of the North (released, November 1926), maybe Louis Chaudet should be considered for the accolade of world's worst director. Here's a movie that looks like it was made in 1912 at the latest. Although set in the Arctic wastes, it is entirely played out on the floor (or rather the proscenium) of an impoverished Poverty Row studio, complete with a cast of hams led by slow-reacting Joe Girard as a mutinous mate, Gaston Glass (later a production manager and assistant director) as the frozen-faced hero, and the luckless Alice Calhoun as the deadly dull heroine. A major star of the silents, Miss Calhoun surely did much more ingratiating work and presented a far more pleasing appearance than she does here. Let us hope that only through the incompetence of her agent or by a nasty quirk of Fate, did she find herself cast in this miserable, static, almost totally actionless, "B"-budget excuse for an inept and totally uninvolving James Oliver Curwood potboiler. Even Joe Walker's photography, despite the use of tinted stock, comes across as disappointingly flat and almost completely bereft of artistry.
