Emperor of the North

Emperor of the North (1973)

Runtime: 120 minutes

Directed by: Robert Aldrich

Starring: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine, Charles Tyner, Malcolm Atterbury

From: 20th Century Fox

I’ve had this on the DVR since… October 13, 2022! About time “play” was pressed. This was a film discussed on the Pure Cinema Podcast long ago and the high praise intrigued. As it’s an arduous task just to try and track down the picture, that’s why it was recorded when the film played on Fox Movie Channel during its retro hours—meaning no commercials and nothing’s edited out. A plot of “1930’s hobos try to ride a train but have to deal with sadistic conductor Ernest Borgnine” is esoteric. Yet, the lead hobos are Lee Marvin & Keith Carradine, in a production directed by Robert Aldrich-there is no excuse for waiting so long for viewing so it could be deleted.

The setting is 1933 during The Great Depression, where the United States is in rough shape; that’s why there were so many hobos that rode the trains so they could try to find work somewhere. That practice is illegal but Borgnine’s method is to kill those men with a giant mallet; that made him an easy villain to root against. By the by, the film’s original title (Emperor of the North Pole) refers to how even the best hobo would not be any better than an emperor of a vast, empty, frozen wasteland. Borgnine’s character is simply known as Shack, Carradine’s Cigaret and Marvin’s, A No. 1; need I say more?

The premise is simple: Borgnine’s character was literally supposed to represent The Establishment and Marvin was the Anti-Establishment (apt casting in that case) and it is a mano y mano battle where the goal is for a hobo to ride Shack’s train for any length of time as it’s never been done. It’s a challenge and the movie is quite visceral; you wouldn’t believe the final showdown, yet alone the weapons involved.

It’s a movie loosely based on a Jack London novel that was filmed in the same area of Oregon as Buster Keaton’s The General—a tale which takes two hours to tell but is never dull due to the time spent on knowing the protagonists and the unique world of hobos-Wiki has a great article about the topic. There’s That Guy actor Charles Tyner in a big role, Lance Henriksen in a bit part, Vic Tayback & Elisha Cook, Jr. for a moment and Sid Haig in one scene… a shame that the only ways to track this down is Fubo, finding a stream in the bowels of the Internet, or trying to order a physical copy that likely will be pricey, especially the long out of print Twilight Time Blu.