Wolf Call

Polly Ann Young and John Carroll get drunk and steal a German shepherd from a pet shop. Carroll's father, Guy Usher -- you can see the family resemblance in their mustaches -- tells him he's going to work, fly up to Radium City and see if the mine there can be made to pay. So Carroll and the dog head off to the land of voyageurs so Carroll can sing love duets with Movita and the dog can get tight with wolves.

Nominally based on the novel by Jack London to avoid paying royalties, this modernized version tries to be all things to all people: ROSE-MARIE and rough-house philosophy and science booster. As a result, of those and its cheap Monogram budget, it seems mildly ridiculous. Fred Jackman Jr's nice location photography around Big Bear Lake was dimmed by a muddy print, and the sound cut out at odd moments.

According to IMDB, "Wolf Call" is based on the novel "The Wolf Call" by Jack London. Well, I tried a Google search and could NOT find any mention of this novel nor could I find it on Wikipedia. Now I am not saying it doesn't exist...but it seems likely it doesn't. So, I am not sure on which story this film is based....if any at all.

Mike (John Carroll) is a bit of a playboy. His father wants to see Mike grow into a decent man and to get him away from his dopey girlfriend and his boyish ways, he sends Mike on a mission to the middle of no where in Canada to inspect a mine he owns. Mike's job is to determine whether or not they should keep this mine* open or not.

One there, Mike has some run in with some jerks and meets a native girl, Towanah...with which he falls in love. And, the jerks try to keep Mike from keeping the mine open because, well, they're jerks! Can Mike manage to convince his father to keep this mine running?

This film is okay....just okay. A decent enough time-passer but offering little that would make it a must-see film.

*The plot says it's a radium mine but if I am not mistaken, radium is made through processing uranite and I would think they'd refer to it as a uranite mine. Of course, I am no expert on this.

This seems to be something like a hotch-potch with nothing of Jack London in it whatsoever but maybe casually inspired by some of his tales - there are some wolves howling, there is a dog being allured by them, there is a beautiful half Indian girl all dressed up like in an Indian masquerade for tourists, but then there is a lot of bustle about radium and a mine of it - this doesn't look like Jack London at all. And all those workers and interested parties of the mine, including some picturesque Irishmen, don't seem to mind at all that radium is supposed to be radioactive. Maybe it wasn't in those days. But the most surprising point is that the protagonist John Carroll sings, and by singing he attracts that half Indian girl who sings as well. This is now tilting at great risk to a musical in the mountains, and you almost expect Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy to pop up, like in a Sigmund Romberg operetta, but there are no more than two songs - the rest is all about radium, the dog and the wolves and intrigues about the mine. It's not a bad film and not a bad story, but Jack London would have shaken his head in utter dismay not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.

Basics: Playboy son of hard-working, self-made millionaire. Likes girls, drinking and his only ambition is to do more girls and more drinking. Mother dead. (Cost of extra character unneeded for plot purposes.) Father disgusted with son. Father ships son off to "make a man of him." Son none-too-happy with sudden life-style change.

Set-Up: Playboy Michael "Mike" Vance, Jr. (John Carroll)is night-clubbing in New York City with Natalie (Polly Ann Young.) Natalie is shallow. Mike doesn't care. Mike and Natalie join a scavenger hunt and break-in a pet shop to get something they require for the treasure-hunt prize. While there, Mike frees (as seen in the credits) Smokey (Grey Cloud), a police dog, and Smokey follows Mike home. The next day, Mike's father (Guy Usher), disgusted with Mike's spoiled and care-free lifestyle and hangovers, sends Mike to the Vance Canadian Radium Mine to report back whether or not the mine is worth keeping. Mike takes his new best-friend Smoky with him.

Son meets Life-style changing people sequence: In Canada, Mike meets a priest, Father Devlin (Peter George Lynn) and Grogan (John Sheehan), an Irish mine worker, and when Mike gets into a fight---to prove he isn't your everyday sissy-boy playboy---with "Bull" (John Kelly), the impressed Groagn and Father Devlin befriend him. Mike meets with Carson (Wheeler Oakman), the mine superintendent, who tells Mike that the mine is losing money and should be sold to Radium Syndicate Ltd., Inc., because the cost of shipping radium is too high for a single owner. But Mike also meets the Indian maiden, Towanah (Movita)who begs him not to sell the mine, and she introduces him to her father, Dr. McTavish (George Cleveland), who is perfecting a new process of reducing radium which will make the cost of shipping it negligible. After explaining the definition of negligible to Mike, Doc McTavish also explains that Towanah is only half-Indian maiden. Towanah McTavish's mother is also dead. Actually, Towanah is half-Indian but 100% maiden. Or, claims to be.

Mike-is-smitten and the-plot-thickens sequence: Carson declares that the McTavish process is no good, and then informs Mike Sr. that his son has the real scoop and is only staying in Canada because of his affair with Towanah. The down-hearted Mike Sr. decides to sell the mine.

The Boy Gets Tested Sequence: When Mike and Father Devlin try to contact Senior by radio, Carson destroys the set, and Mike discovers that he is in league with Radium Syndicate Ltd., Inc. to get control of the mine so they can have a monopoly on radium and keep the prices up. They already have Madame Curie's stash. From this point forward it is open war between Mike and Carson. Mike escapes from Carson's henchmen with the help of Towanna and Father Devlin, and attempts to fly to New York to get to his father before he sells the mine. He has only twelve hours to do this. But, Carson and his henchmen (including of course, Roger Williams who was everybody's henchman)sabotage the airplane, and Mike crashes in the mountains.

The Boy Comes Through (with the help of a dog) Sequence: Smokey, who has been rather quiet since leaving New York, finds Mike in the mountains, and Smokey's uncredited mate---but he has been busy off-camera---keeps the wolves away while Smokey finds Father Devlin. He and Towanah and Grogan rescue Mike, Father Devlin uses the plane's radio to contact Vance, Sr., and the mine is saved. Why Mike didn't do that before taking off in a sabotaged airplane is left unexplained, to the dismay of the nit-pickers.

The Boy Becomes A Man Sequence: When Mike's grateful father comes to take him home, Mike realizes his love for the half-Indian/all Maiden Towanah and breaks his engagement with Natalie. Then, with Towanah at his side, he decides to remain in Canada and start life anew.