The Call of the Wild

(UK - France - W. Germany - Italy - Norway - Spain)

Towers of London. Director Ken Annakin; Producer Harry Alan Towers; Screenplay Peter Welbeck, Win Wells, Peter Yeldham; Camera John Cabrera; Editor Thelma Connell; Music Carlo Rustichelli;; Art Director Knut Solberg

Charlton Heston
Raimund Harmsdorf
Michele Mercier
George Eastman
Sancho Gracia
Maria Rohm

Jack London's thrilling, often-filmed tale trails a couple of roughnecks, John and Pete, on their gold-digging, mail-hopping, and booze-deal fortune hunts in Alaska's snowbound wilderness. Time and again, they are outsmarted and outroughed by an assorted pack of rivals.

Director Ken Annakin picked a few good actors (Charlton Heston and Italo-western hero George Eastman) and some others capable of no more than looking their parts (Raimund Harmsdorf, Michele Mercier). But everybody appears to play merely along action line on his own and create a vacuum around him.

Thus lacking the density of London's original, the picture falls to pieces with all that frozen gore, dog fights, sled chases, saloon brawls and other knock-down melodramatics.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1973. Running time: 100 MIN.

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