Cinema: A Dog’s Best Friend

Nikki, Wild Dog of the North (Buena Vista). Disney in the raw is seldom mild, but the Dad-why-can’t-I-have-a-hunting-knife set doesn’t mind. This incessantly violent, incessantly beautiful adaptation of James Oliver Curwood’s Nomads of the North will delight every ten-year-old who ever wrestled his pillow and pretended it was a grizzly bear.

Filmed in color in the Kananaskis Valley, a spectacular slash in the Canadian Rockies, the picture describes the early life and hard times of a pup of the Malemute breed (seven parts Husky, one part wolf). As the story starts, the pup lies playfully tussling with a black bear cub in the bottom of a canoe. All at once the canoe capsizes, and the two wobbly whippersnappers are flung into the river, washed over a waterfall. When at last they struggle ashore, pup and cub are alone in the great north woods, far from human help but entirely too close for comfort—they are tied together by a six-foot leather leash.

The next reel is all kinds of fun: a hilarious switch on the man-walks-dog routine, a kindergarten course in the divergence of species, and possibly even a sly political charade with special interest for those nations that are tied to a bear. When the pup leaps off in pursuit of a wood rat, the cub just sits there on his little bear behind and wonders vaguely what all the barking is about, so the rat gets away and the pup goes hungry. The bear on the other hand finds plenty to eat —berry bushes and beehives can’t run away. And while the cub is getting honey, the pup is getting stung. At night, when the pup settles down for some shut-eye on a nice soft patch of grass, the bear climbs the nearest tree. Dawn finds the dog’s muzzle sleeping blissfully on the grass, while his rump, caught in the leash, sleeps fitfully about 18 inches off the ground.

Eventually, of course, familiarity breeds content—one night at bedtime the little darlings, like many well-trained Disney animals, exchange a nutter of ever-so-cute kisses that will probably make every little girl say ah and every little boy say ugh. Fortunately for the little boys, the cord is soon cut, and the pup runs off to bigger and bloodier adventures involving a vicious wolverine, a great big nasty old grizzly bear, a number of extraordinarily large and healthy timber wolves who have obviously had their teeth shined up by the studio dentist, and a peculiar vertical animal called Man. As described by Naturalist Disney, Man falls into two subspecies. There’s the good guys, and there’s the bad guys.