Wilderness Interface Zone Retro Review – Wilderness Interface Zone

Today is WIZ’s third birthday, and we’re in the mood to give gifts to our loyal readers. For its giveaways, WIZ chooses flicks that feature nature in some way. Our featured movie this time: Typhoon, starring Dorothy Lamour and Robert Preston.

This movie comes from an age when Hollywood trotted out the tropics when it needed an idyllic backdrop to frame one of its golden-throated beauties. Because, you know, nothing makes nature look better than a sarong-clad peach. Typhoon contains several formulaic parallels to The Jungle Princess (reviewed here on WIZ), the movie that launched Lamour’s acting career. Typhoon is another eye-and-ear candy adventure-romance starring Dorothy Lamour and animal friends along with a young Robert Preston in a screenplay that features cutting-edge special effects for 1930s-era films (Typhoon was released in 1940). Continue reading “WIZ’s Birthday Retro Review: Typhoon”

Jules Vincent (marvelously played by Steward Granger) is a happy-go-lucky French trapper making his living off some of the most dangerous country in Canada. He comes to town one day to replenish his supplies. While there, he rescues a kitten from a bad-tempered collie and an unhappy part-Chippewa woman (Cyd Charisse) from the saloon where she works after gallantly protecting her from a drunken jerk named Brody. The next morning, Jules sets out for his wilderness home with both the kitten and Indian woman as passengers in his canoe. Claiming to be a good hand with a paddle, Brody convinces Jules to take him, too. But Brody’s presence gives rise to danger that threatens everyone in the canoe, and when Jules, the Indian woman, and the kitten arrive at the settlement where the Indian woman is to rejoin her tribe, Brody is mysteriously absent. Knowing the law will come after him, Jules flees to the wilderness rather than chance a trial where his fate will be determined by city dwellers (“ribbon clerks,” he calls them) who can’t possibly grasp the perils of life in the wilderness. Continue reading “WIZ Retro Review: The Wild North”