Nomads of the North

This movie shouldn't be looked at for any redeeming social value or higher meaning. It's a rip-roaring melodrama that makes you cheer the good guys and boo the bad guys. Chaney overacts horribly (but deliciously) as Challoner and Stone is suitably stoic as the Mountie forced to track Chaney down. Macdonald is the man who tries to steal Blythe's virtue. It looks like they had a lot of fun making this one. They just don't make movies like this anymore: they either make the lampoon too obvious or take themselves too damned seriously.

Lon Chaney stars as the handsome hero in this one (was The Penalty the film that started him down the path of playing villains and monsters?). A fur trapper who was stuck up in northern Canada for a year longer than he had planned, he returns home, some 300 miles south, to find his fiancée (Betty Blythe) about to marry the villainous son (Melbourne MacDowell) of the man who runs the town. Chaney gets into a fight and kills a man, but escapes with the girl. A while later, MacDowell finds the couple settled in the wilderness and enlists an honorable Mountie (Lewis Stone, who would go on to co-star in Grand Hotel) to bring Chaney to justice. It's a pretty standard melodrama from this period, but it's entertaining. The forest fire climax is quite well done. There's a lot of emphasis on Chaney's pets, a dog and a bear. Near the beginning, they get separated from their master (tethered together - you expect them to die horribly), and even have dialogue with each other. It almost turns into a silent Homeward Bound for a while!

This is one of those films made before Chaney became a great star and is, sadly, just another potboiler. Chaney himself overacts wildly and you might be forgiven for thinking this movie was made ten years earlier. Betty Blythe is no more than homely.Lewis Stone acts with dignity and is understated throughout, though scenes of him looking for Chaney are too obviously posed, a little like the much mocked "catalogue" pose. Greatest credit goes to Brimstone and Neewa who consistently maintain their standards throughout the film. There is a rather feeble use of miniatures in the storm at night scene, but the great forest fire is obviously genuine and there are some wonderful shots of the northern landscape which, on my copy, are backed by a fairly suitable classical track-it may be Tchaikovsky, but I'm not certain.

This is definitely not one of his better films.

He is cast as the "hero", and a rather bland hero at that. It simply did not offer the incredibly talented Mr. Chaney enough "to do", so he chews the scenery through most of his scenes.

Point to note in this film, the stars were nearly killed in the big fire scene when their escape route was cut off. All three wound up in the hospital.

If you are a Chaney fan you will watch this and enjoy it regardless, but it will not be anyone's favorite Chaney film.

Adapted for the screen for his own production company from his 1919 novel of the same name by James Oliver Kurwood, it comes as little surprise that Kurwood's book was later filmed by Disney (much changed) as 'Nikki, Wild Dog of the North' in 1961.

Chaney completists, take heed, his role is billed third, although he actually has more screen time than top-billed Lewis S. Stone (as he is indentified in the credits); the real stars being Walter L. Griffin's superb outdoor photography, the cute team of a bear called Neewa and his four-legged friend Brimstone, and leading lady Betty Blythe; in roughly that order.

The rather one-note positivity of Chaney's role has been the subject of complaints; but this was still early days and he hadn't yet become as closely associated with macabre melodrama as he soon would. I found it refreshing to see him looking so dashing and handsome and getting the girl at the end. (Usually when you see Chaney looking this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed it's at the start of a flashback and something TERRIBLE promptly happens to him; it's nice to see him get a break for once.)