Wolf Dog (1958) User Reviews

Dead boring or just plain dull? Take your pick!

[JohnHowardReid · 4/10 · 28 June 2017]

This film was obviously lensed back-to-back with "Flaming Frontier". The behind-the-camera credits are identical.

Copyright 1958 by Regal Films. Released through 20th Century-Fox. No New York opening. U.S. release: July 1958. U.K. release: floating from July 1958. Australian release: 11 September 1958. 6,203 feet. 69 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: In the Canadian Northwest, ex-Marine Jim Hughes finishes a prison term for manslaughter and returns to his ranch, his wife, Ellen, and his ten-year-old son, Paul. Jim's land is coveted by a ruthless neighbor named Krivak who, one day, allows his vicious dog to kill Paul's much smaller dog. The boy's grief is somewhat lessened when he finds a wild puppy, part wolf, and is permitted to keep it. In time, two convicts force their way into Jim's home.

COMMENT: Jim Davis who played the villain in the back-to-back "Flaming Frontier" has the hero spot in this one. Frankly. we prefer him as a heavy.

OTHER VIEWS: The stilted man-to-man dialogue between son and father, the strained attempts to pile up the odds against Jim, especially in the highly unconvincing episode of the convicts, and the overall dullness of acting and photography, leave very little to be said for this film. "Prince" exploits his doggy charms, but even he looks bored. — Monthly Film Bulletin.

"Wolf Dog", a Regalscope picture about Canadian ranch life, is strictly a Canadian production although the two co-stars, Jim Davis and Allison Hayes, are from Hollywood. Director Sam Newfield filmed the production entirely in Canada, the locale of Louis Stevens' story. Two of the pivotal roles in the picture, the boy and the dog, are played by Tony Brown, a 12-year-old newsboy from Bolton, Ontario, and Prince, a German Shepherd dog, who was recruited by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police canine training school. Prince, who is a great-great-great-grandson of the famous dog star, Rin Tin Tin, makes his film debut in "Wolf Dog". Tony also makes his first screen appearance in the picture. — Fox press release.

A Wolf called Dog

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 2 July 2015]

***SPOILERS*** Lost for some 40 years until rediscovered in the late 1990's "Wolf Dog" has now become somewhat, to the few dozen people who watched it, of a cult film. That in it having two bigger then life stars, in the parts that they later played, in it the gravely voiced Jim Davis as ex-convict Jim Hughes who was to become famous as the big oil Petrarch "Jock" of all trades Jock "Jocko" Ewing of the enormously popular TV series "Dallas". As well as having in it the beautiful and stately looking- five foot seven inch-Allison Hayes as Jim's wife Ellen who became immortalized as Nancy Acher the woman who was far too much of a woman for any man, even porn star John C. Holmes, to handle in the movie "The Attack of the Fifty foot Woman".

Hughes a highly decorated Korean War veteran is out on parole for manslaughter in killing a man in a bar fight and now wants to start all over again as a rancher in the Great Canadian Northeast. The problem is that the small and out of the way town that he settled in has a number of people who have it in for him in how he treated them as a tough and take no BS US Marine Corps drill sergeant back in the states! How the wolf dog who's name ironically is "Dog" comes into the picture is in him replacing Jim's 10 year old son Paul's, Tony Brown, dog "Spot" who was mauled to death by the town bully Clem Krivak's Austin Willis, pet attack dog "Thunder". It was Krivak who, like almost everyone else in the film, also had it in for Hughes who set "Thunder" on the poor mutt "Spot", who was twice his size, and mauled him to death. It was "Dog" who later was to even the score in a ferocious dog fight, that "Thunder" instigated, by giving him back for what he did to "Spot" everything that he had coming to him!

***SPOILERS***It was when escaped murders Trent & Hawkins, Don Garrard & Juan Root, who knew Hughes as a cell-mate of theirs back in prison, everybody in the movie seems to know Jim Hughes,took him his wife son as well as dog hostage that things really, as if they didn't already, started popping! Faced with death by the escaped murders if he didn't cooperate with them or prison, by breaking his parole, if he did it was the real hero of the movie "Dog" now, in him killing "Thunder", also a fugitive from justice who was to straighten everything out. That together with a squad of the town's police and reinforced by a local detachment of Canadian Mounties coming to the rescue of the terrified and beleaguered held hostage Hughes family.

Dog Wolf.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 5/10 · 21 July 2017]

Struggling to find pre-70's Canadian films for an ICM challenge,I started to take a closer look at each individual year. Finding only a small number from the 50's,I was happy to spot a Canadian Western,which led to me freeing the wolf dog.

The plot:

Freed after serving years in jail for manslaughter, Jim Hughes decides to start a new life by taking his wife Ellen and son Paul to a new home in the countryside. Whilst Paul gets a warm welcome from a wolf dog he finds,Jim gets a less than welcoming reception from the locals. Trying to go in a new direction,Jim soon finds people from his past sniffing out his new location.

View on the film:

Filmed in the dusty rural lands of Markdale, Ontario, producer/director Sam Newfield & cinematographer Frederick Ford make this a Lassie- style family Drama with some Western and Film Gris sides chipped in. Panning along the countryside surroundings of the Hughes house,Newfield enters the house with cornered shots which hint that Jim's past is catching up. Joined by a chiselled Jim Davis as Jim and an aw-shucks Tony Brown as Paul, Allison Hayes gives a sweet, motherly performance as Ellen Hughes,who hears the wolf dog bark at the moon.

Deserves its poor reputation

[GeoDover · 2/10 · 16 November 2015]

Set in a small western town, WOLF DOG centers on a kid (played by Tony Brown) who sees his dog mauled to death and on the rebound finds and trains a "wolf dog" that is played by a very rambunctious German Shepherd named Prince. Prince is the main reason for seeing the movie, as the story is hardly stellar and rather poorly played, mostly by Jim Davis as a lying ex-con father mixed up with escaped prisoners, and the beautiful Allison Hayes who plays the mother. She looks totally out of place in this modern Western setting, although she makes the most of looking worried. The kid's father lies to his son and stands by while his boy's dog is brutally killed by another dog, a hefty black Lab belonging to his rival, a "Snidely Whiplash" kind of villain. The plot has something to do with cattle and land rights. Prince does not really get to interact much with the bad guys in the movie, but appears to seriously injure another dog. The dog on dog violence in WOLF DOG is strange. The movie is not really for family viewing, and children of the time must have found it boring, filled with adult situations that don't really make sense to adults, either.

I'll Always Love It, Even If You Won't...

[animal_8_5 · 6/10 · 16 October 2004]

A town with more "No Parking" signs than cars to park. A populace that raced to a dog fight at the drop of a flea collar.

WOLF DOG was "Lassie" with an ironic edge. A torturous "B" film which was in conflict with its very identity. Much like Canada, where it was filmed in 1957. With much fanfare upon its release, the film disappeared by the early sixties. First of all, the picture's tagline declares "Outlaw Terror of the Great North Country" and yet the law is upheld by a U.S. Marshal. Hollywood rumors say one of the actors wanted it gone ... no trace of it - Why? As I said "torturous"...

No one knows the word "torturous" better than poor 11 year old Paul Hughes (played by Canadian youth actor, Anthony Brown). In a short time, Paul has to endure moving into rural isolation, having his dog killed before his eyes in a dog fight inside the Markdale Garage, finding out that his parents lied to him about his Dad being in jail for five years.

If that's not enough, his family is then terrorized by a vicious rancher seeking to possess their land and then held hostage in their home by bank robbers! Through it all, "Dog" (original name, huh?) does nothing heroic, nothing remotely exciting ... and becomes loved by the entire family for it!?!

In fact, Dog seems to cause many of the problems in the picture. The pooch played by Prince almost gets Paul drowned in the rapids, goes into town and kills another dog in a horrific fight, then barks to let bad guys know Paul is in a closet. Paul declares mystically "He's wonderful, isn't he, Dad?"

And "Dog" is a wuss, besides. Jim Hughes (Davis) gets shot by a bank robber, then miraculously appears unscathed in the very next scene. This while young Paul wraps the dog's paws, wounded in a dogfight from several scenes previous.

Craggy-faced Missouri actor Jim Davis won one of his rare cinematic starring roles in WOLF DOG. Davis, who signed autographs for locals in Markdale's old Marigold Restaurant in 1957 and gushed to a cub newspaper reporter about "the wonderful farming country in the district", had one wonderfully choreographed fistfight with actor John Hart, who appeared in the credits under the name B. Braithwaite. The paternal role of Jim Hughes would serve him well in a future role that would make him a Hollywood luminary in the seventies, Jock Ewing, of the TV series "Dallas."

The role of the main heavy in this set-in-1950 western is a departure for the late Austin Willis. The urbane Canadian actor, best known as suave "silver fox" types in motion pictures, puts a dark head into his black hat (complete with Richard Kimble FUGITIVE-style dye job) and tries to become Jim Hughes' (Davis) worst nightmare.

Speaking of reverie, the starlet thought to be the best wet dream in 1950s "B" movies plays Davis' wife - Allison Hayes. I wonder how many small town male hearts went "flutter" when stunning Allison sashayed into the front doors of F.T. Hill's department store that sweltering August day? She reportedly benefited from the services of local hairdresser Mabel Douglas, who really outdid herself with a styling brush and a little hair fix.

Why do I write of this? The movie WOLF DOG was filmed in my hometown of Markdale, Ontario, Canada. Many locals appeared in the movie as extras and I have had the pleasure of meeting a number. While there are no longer as many tractors parked on the streets as there seemed to be in 1957 and the main corner finally warranted traffic lights by the late 1970s, its amazing how the old place never changed. Watching WOLF DOG revitalizes me a great deal. It offers me a chance to revisit childhood, when streets were clean, life was simple and people were generally happy. God knows we could use more of that today.

Today, the mysterious legacy of WOLF DOG has become more popular than ever to the folk of this tiny Canadian town. In July 2007, a public screening of the cineplay finally took place for residents who hadn't seen hide, nor hair of it in almost 50 years! Other than the great promotional support provided by CBC Radio, no one else from the outside knows, or even seems to care about the flick...and that's just fine. WOLF DOG remains our treasure and we're proud of it!