It's a Disney True-Life adventure shot near Sedonia, Arizona, with the cast and crew that was becoming standard for the series of pseudo-documentaries, with James Algar directing and Rex Bell narrating, with songs by the Sherman twins and incidental music by the Sons of the Pioneers.
It's the story of Lobo, a wolf in the 19th Century, about the time cattle ranching was introduced following the wiping out of the buffalo, based on a story by Ernst Thompson Seton. There's the usual amazing photography, not just of the red butte-and-mesa land, but the amazingly trained animals.
Enjoyable as the parts of the movie are, I noticed that the story-telling aspect had fallen into set patterns. When the young Lobo makes friends and goes frolicking with a young antelope, it struck me: in many ways, this movie is BAMBI, only Man has entered the desert, with guns and traps and dogs. There's clearly a character, an uncredited actor who has set himself against Lobo, but he is given no personality; he is referred to only as "the hunter."
Disney was by no means a one-man operation; there were many creative people working for him. However, his management-by-wandering-around style meant that, although he might have one project at a time uppermost in his mind -- at this point, probably MARY POPPINS -- he might turn up at any point. The folks in the animation section had a warning for when was was around: "Man is in the Forest."
