WOLF CALL (1939)

Playboy Mike Vance (John Carroll) is on a drunken scavenger hunt with his girlfriend. One of the items on the list is a police dog, so Vance throws a brick through a pet shop window and takes a German shepherd that comes bounding out, tossing back enough cash to cover the dog and the damages. The next day, his father, upset with his ways, sends Mike on a mission to the Yukon to one of his properties, a radium mine named Radium City. Huge amounts of ore have to be shipped back to the States in order to produce just a small amount of radium, and Vance wants Mike to decide whether he should shut down the mine and sell the property or keep it going. Accompanied by the dog, which he has named Smokey, Mike arrives to discover a potential bad guy, Carson, the mine manger, whom we discover is working with Vinton, one of Vance's associates, to cheat him out of the property—they know that a scientist named McTavish has invented a formula that would allow them to process the ore cheaply right there in Canada, and they're working on a deal to acquire the mine for a corporate trust. Mike also meets a couple of good guys: McTavish, who is unaware of Carson's plans, and Father Devlin (Peter George Lynn), the area priest who senses that something bad is brewing. Mike meets and falls for Towana (Movita), the half-Indian daughter of MacTavish, at the same time that Smokey scouts out some territory for himself and strikes up a relationship with a wild dog while keeping clear of local wolf packs. Soon, back in the States, Vinton has convinced Vance that his son wants to keep the mine open just to hang with his local girl, so Vance is ready to sell. Can Mike get word to his father in time to stop the crooked deal?

This is supposedly based on a Jack London story, but no internet source out there has been able to track down which one. At any rate, the wolf and dog connection is a tenuous one, applied just to make this adventure melodrama stand out from the pack. This is a fairly enjoyable B-movie, largely due to John Carroll. He's known as the B-movie Clark Gable and that’s how he comes off here: handsome, masculine, in control, but less stoic than Gable. He even sings a little, including a kind of Nelson Eddy & Jeanette McDonald operetta bit with his leading lady Movita (who was married briefly to Marlon Brando in the 1960s). She's adequate in the role, but the romance plays out rather tepidly. More interesting is Lynn as the priest, though ultimately his role is underwritten. The rest of the cast is colorless. Loretta Young's sister Polly Ann Young plays the big city girlfriend who has little to do except realize at the end that Mike will be better off with Towana. Grey Shadow is the dog who plays Smokey and he's fine. There’s a very nice fisticuffs scene near the end as the bad guys attack Mike that is reminiscent of a cliffhanger in a serial chapter. Despite the misleading title (we only see wolves briefly), this is fun for B-movie fans. [YouTube]