Three years after 20th Century Fox made a great film from Jack London's Call Of The Wild, Republic made this pale imitation of another story of passions in the frozen north in Call Of The Yukon. Jack London set a mighty high standard in these kinds of adventure novels which this one really did not meet cinematically.Richard Arlen plays a rugged trapper who like several of the Inuit is fleeing the country as a pack of wolves has pretty much devastated the wild game around there. Not because of the lack of game to trap, but because those wolves are ready to feast on some human meat if hungry enough. Not ready to flee is Beverly Roberts who's a novelist looking for solitude to write her next book which she's decided will be a story in that locale. Arlen packs her along unwillingly and he's most unwilling to take along a menagerie that consists of her talking bird, two bear cubs and a collie who is grieving for his master.Without getting too much into the particulars there is a human and animal story played out at the same time. That collie develops a yen for the leader of the wolf pack, a half dog half wolf. Despite the attentions later on of a fine St. Bernard. That St. Bernard belongs to Lyle Talbot who is the sweetheart of Roberts who has come up to rescue her himself. I'm not spilling how the human or the animal passions play out here.Some interesting sequences of the frozen north worked into this film, but it's a B Republic feature so what might have been a good film from one of the big studios is just a routine programmer from Republic.It has potential, but too bad Jack London wasn't the screenwriter.

My first thought was "what's with the name?" When I hear "The Yukon," I think of the Yukon Territory, which is in Canada. This was set in Alaska. But then I remembered that a portion of the Yukon River is in Alaska, so I'll grant that one. Still, what we have here is a very, very bad movie.It looks grainy and cheap. Maybe it's grainy because of age, but that doesn't explain the cheap part - and lots of movies made in the 1930's have stood up very, very well. This one doesn't. The acting is dull and lifeless for the most part, and really for a significant chunk of the film,. this seems more interested in being a cutesy animal film, with a talking crow and bear cubs playing, with a musical score that more often than not really didn't seem appropriate to what was supposed to be a 1930's version of an action-adventure.The story revolves around Jean and Gaston (Beverly Roberts and Richard Arlen) trying to find their way out of the Alaskan wilderness and having to deal with a pack of wild dogs while doing so. Meanwhile, a domestic collie named Firefly becomes a mate to the leader of the wild pack. The story of the dogs really parallelled what became the point of the last 20 minutes or so of the film, as Jean is forced to choose between the rough and tumble Gaston and the civilized and cultured Hugo (Lyle Talbot) - because Firefly has to choose between life as a wild dog and life with humans. OK. That was pretty obvious once Gaston and Hugo got into their fight over Jean. But that one point that worked really can't do anything to save this. It truly is a dreadful movie. (1/10)

Call Of The Yukon is a low-grade film from a cheap studio. The acting is unbelievable and the plot does very little to sustain one's interest. In fact I'd say the canine performers add more to the film than the humans. Yet if you look past this then you may perhaps enjoy the film simply for its location shots of the frozen north and its depiction of wildlife, if that's your kind of thing.The one thing that I thought was clever in the writing was how the behaviour of the dogs in the film reflect the attitudes of the main characters. But, this did little to save what was really just a hackneyed attempt at an adventure film. I was so grateful when this cheesy and sloppily chopped together film ended. And not a minute too soon...

***SPOILERS*** After her master game warden Francis Graham died on the way to the little Yukon town of Topek his loyal dog the collie Firefly just about gave up on life. Firefly spent hours at a time never leaving her master's graveside until she came in contact with the mix breed, half wolf half dog, alpha wolf Swift Lightning.It was during the cold and bitter winter of 1937-38 that Swift Lightining lead his pack of hungry wolves in and around Topek killing off and eating all the available game, a herd of caribou, making it impossible for the local native and Canadian and American trappers to survive there. With everyone in town going up north to the town and city of Nenana and Faribanks young American writer Jean Williams opted to stay only to change her mind when the both cold and pack of wolves started to close in on her cabin.With only the American trapper Gaston Rogers, who stayed behind, to help Jean travels up north to Nenana and to civilization where the two got unexpected help from both Firefly and her now mate for life the ferocious wolf/dog Swift Lightning. At first Gaston was not at all that friendly with the two canines whom he looked at as food, when both his and Jean's rations ran out, and nothing else. It was later when the two mutts proved how valuable they were in saving both his and Jean's lives that Gaston started to have second thoughts about his fellow, in the Yukon, living creatures and four footed friends. That's when Gaston himself risked his life in returning the favor by going out in the woods during an drenching spring downpour and rescuing Swift Lightning's, who was trapped under a fallen three, life.The movie shows how in a place like the inhospitable Yukon man and animal have to cooperate with each other in order for both to survive. Both Swift Lightning and Firefly showed the more then willing to shoot them down Gaston that they are indeed man's best friend. Jean who was at first in loved with the far less macho Hugo Henderson saw in Gaston, who for a time she couldn't stand, a man willing to change his ways when confronted with the truth in that wolves, like Swift Lightning, can be as, if not more, dependable as any fellow trapper and hunter in the wild.