The Call of the Wild

Euro version of Jack London’s classic with Charlton Heston

During the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, two mail dispatchers travel by dog sled from Skagway, on the coast of southeast Alaska, to Dawson City over 400 miles north in the Yukon. One of the sled dogs, Buck, is fresh from California with no experience in snowy weather. Thorton (Heston) unwisely makes an enemy of the town mogul (George Eastman) while getting friendly with a beautiful saloon proprietor (Michèle Mercier).

“The Call of the Wild” (1972) is a surprisingly good wilderness adventure with spectacular locations that could pass for a Western in the mold of “North to Alaska” (1960), albeit minus the slapstick humor. The later “North Star” (1996) and “The Claim” (2000) also come to mind, as does “The Mountain Men” (1980) due to Heston in the lead role and the wintery Western milieu. The fact that the film includes a dog as one of the protagonists brings to mind eye-rolling Disney flicks, but this isn’t Disney-fied at all. I should point out that Buck here is a German Shepherd whereas in the book he’s a St. Bernard–Scotch Shepherd mix.

The runtime is just over 1 hour, 40 minutes. Beware of versions available on streaming (e.g. Tubi and Plex) that cut a full half hour in the last act. I’m talking about the sequences involving Thorton fraternizing with Calliope at the saloon and in a Western-styled bathtub, as well as the sequences of Pete (Raimund Harmstorf) looking for gold with his half-breed guide (Juan Luis Galiardo). There’s currently a great HD version available for free on Youtube (the full version).

Michèle Mercier is stunning on the female front as redhead Calliope while Maria Rohm is lovely as blonde Mercedes.

Heston lamented “The Call of the Wild” as his worst film, but he was objecting more to the difficulties involved in making the flick and the Euro politics thereof, rather than the movie itself; that is, the final product. For instance, the production team had to import sled dogs since there (curiously) weren’t any in Norway and Heston had to learn the arcane art of dog sledding on the spot wherein the dogs would either run or fight each other.

As far as the “Euro politics” go, this was a joint British, Norwegian, German, French, Spanish and Italian production (so expect a lot of dubbing à la Spaghetti Westerns). This forced the rogue Brit producer to hire at least two key participants from each country to facilitate distribution in Europe. Heston called the cast/crew an assemblage gathered by political committee rather than ability, a “United Nations” production. It didn’t help that Spaniard Juan Luis Galiardo (Seze) was lonely and depressed on set, which was augmented by the fact that he couldn’t speak English or the languages of the other members.

The film was shot primarily in Norway, but also Lapland, Finland, with studio stuff done in Spain.

GRADE: B+/A-