Emperor of the North

April 4, 2008

Rated: PG Runtime: 118 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This 1973 film by director Robert Aldrich (THE DIRTY DOZEN, and the original THE LONGEST YARD) is one strange movie. Finally released on DVD in 2006, it was originally titled EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE, but apparently changed because people were mistaking it for a Christmas movie. It’s about hoboes in the 1930s in Oregon trying to ride freight trains.

One train in particular is guarded by a notorious conductor named Shack (Ernest Borgnine). He likes to knock hoboes off his train with a sledgehammer. The movie opens with one guy falling under the train and getting sliced in half.

emperorofthenorth.jpgA-Number-One, who is more-or-less the King of the Hoboes, is determined that he’s going to ride Shack’s train. There’s a young upstart named Cigaret (Keith Carradine) who wants to get into this hobo secret society.

The last hour of the movie is a brutal King Of The Mountain game played atop a moving train. These hoboes don’t have anywhere they particularly need to go on this train, and the railroad probably wouldn’t go bankrupt if a few of them managed to ride the train, so it’s pretty much Men On Trains Behaving Badly.

Something maybe not readily apparent in the movie is that it’s (very) loosely based on stories by Jack London (CALL OF THE WILD), and the real-life hobo A-Number-One. In fact, Jack London’s hobo nickname was Cigaret.

DVD Features: Commentary by a film historian, theatrical trailer and TV commercials.

Posted by Mack Guffin | Filed Under 4 Stars, Action, DVD, Drama, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine, Lee Marvin 

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