Alaska Seas

Salmon fishermen in Alaska vie for dominance using both fair means and foul. Rivalry intensifies as two of the leaders compete for the same girl.

Well-mounted Paramount production. No locations are cited by IMDb, suggesting the Alaskan background resulted from a studio tank, stock shots, and process photography. If so, the effect is very well done. I guess you could call this a "he-man" picture —it's Ryan at his rangiest, Keith at his brawniest, with plenty of action in the last half. But look how they've dolled-up Sterling. Her Nicky is very respectable looking, and a distance from Sterling's usual cheap, sassy blonde. Naturally the boys fight over her, which is not surprising since I think she's the only woman appearing on screen.

Unfortunately, Ryan sacrifices his unique talent for tortured sensitivity to the needs of an action picture. Frankly, his is a "wobbly compass" role a hundred less talented actors could have done. Too bad too that real-life eccentric Timothy Carey (Wycoff) had yet to show his riveting brand of menace on screen. That would emerge in Kubrick's 1956 classic The Killing. Also, can't help noticing blacklisted screenwriter Dan Mainwaring (Invasion of the Body Snatchers {1956}) had a hand here. I expect the notion of a collectively owned cooperative as a solution to cut-throat competition was his idea.

All in all, it's an entertaining film, mainly for guys. But I have to admit that even as a big salmon eater, I was disturbed by stock footage of masses of salmon struggling to stay alive inside the massive nets. I guess that says something about the adage of it being better not to know where your food comes from.

Matt Kelly (Robert Ryan) is a jerk and when the film begins, he's being released from jail in Alaska for poaching. Soon, he's reunited with his friend, Jim (Brian Keith), who is able to convince his fellow salmon fisherman to give Matt a chance. As for Matt, he takes this opportunity to betray his friends and nearly killing several other them and ends up being hated by all because of this. Is this all? Nope...Matt then joins forces with the local baddie and he spends much of the rest of the film stealing, burning, and killing until he ultimately has an inexplicable (and nonsensical) change of heart. The end.

The story is bad. Matt is 100% awful and basing a movie around this character made it difficult to care about him or the movie. His 'redemption' at the very end is also confusing. After all, he is EVIL...and here, inexplicably, he changes sides. It's all very confusing and boring. Good actors wasted with a bad script.

I'm currently listening to my mother try to watch this movie on a portable DVD player. She's yelling and screaming at it, so I rank her performance a solid 8/10. Based on her reactions to the actual film, I rate the movie 2/10. Update: it's not working on the DVD player now. Apparently she bought the Spanish version: Los Mares de Alaska. At this point, I'm less concerned about the quality of the movie, than I am by the fact that my mom still owns a portable DVD player. New Update: she just pulled out a DVD/VCR combo unit. My brother is trying to figure out how to hook it up to a television manufactured in this century. This is getting out of control.

This film is worth watching and far better than its reputation, to be a minor movie, because it is a pretty good programmer which will surprise and enchant you; I promise. Robert Ryan is excellent in this ambivalent character for, I admit, a plot, a scheme that has nothing new to propose. A scheme which we have already seen many times before mostly in westerns, and certainly not in movies involving fishermen in Alaska.... Jerry Hopper is a director who deserves to be more widely known, he was an efficient film provider in any kind except science fiction. Remember PONY EXPRESS, SECRET OF THE INCAS, NAKED ALIBI...Yes, a good director.

Things have changed in the Alaska salmon fishing industry since the government stepped in and limited the river-wide traps. But the desires of the old hands are still the same. Brian Keith wants to marry Jan Sterling and run the salmon fishing/canning cooperative. Gene Barry wants the old monopoly on canning. And Robert Ryan. Keith's old partner who walked out, wants to get out of jail and go back to his boat.

It's a fairly standard men-against-the-world story, with Ryan occupying the middle ground between Keith's too-good-to-be-true position, and Barry's greed. Ryan wants things the way they were, back when he could do what he wanted, but the $1000 lien on his boat for docking owed to Timothy Carey is a real impediment. So which way is he going to go?

In the meantime, there's some nice shots of glaciers calving into the sea, and strong men pounding each other with their fists, but everything shot on the Paramount lot with some moving mattes. Jerry Hopper shoots this programmer with efficiency. Keep an eye out for Ralph Dume, Ross Bagdassian, and Aaron Spelling in the cast.