Challenge to Be Free (1975)

Producer Arthur R. Dubs spent the ’70s making gentle movies about gentle people living in North America’s snowy frontiers, including the Wilderness Family trilogy. While Dubs’ productions are distinguished by handsome nature photography, the generation of substantial narratives was not Dubs’ strong suit. Therefore, it’s peculiar that Dubs opted to make a fictionalized movie about Albert Johnson, a Canadian mountain man who was accused of murder and then became the target of an epic manhunt, eventually earning the moniker “The Mad Trapper of Rat River.” In Dubs’ hilariously whitewashed version of the story, Challenge to Be Free, the leading character known only as “Trapper” (Mike Mazurki) is a harmless recluse who lives in the mountains of Alaska, catching only what he needs to survive while frolicking with—and looking after—assorted furry friends. To give a sense of the movie’s tone, one long sequence features Trapper making flapjacks and feeding them to an elk, all to the accompaniment of cornpone voiceover narration and syrupy background music. In fact, the entire first half-hour of the movie feels like a second-rate Disney travelogue. Then the picture presents Trapper’s run-in with the law as a simple misunderstanding that gets out of hand—never mind that Trapper kills someone with a shotgun and flees the scene. The remainder the film comprises Trapper’s long flight from pursuing Mounties, culminating with his dramatic standoff atop a snowy mountain. Despite the presence of impressive location photography and countless shots of wild animals in what appear to be their natural habitats, the flick is deadly boring. Nearly all the dialogue was dubbed during post-production, giving a disjointed feel; the strain of squeezing a dark story into a G-rated paradigm drains the narrative of vitality; and Mazurki is an amiable bear of a man but nowhere near a movie star, in terms of acting chops and charisma. The story of “The Mad Trapper of Rat River” might be fascinating, but it’s nowhere to be found in the cloying and lifeless Challenge to Be Free.

Challenge to Be Free: LAME

Across the Great Divide (1976)

After scoring a moderate success with The Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1975), a handsomely photographed Disney-style saga about a contemporary clan roughing it in the Rockies, producer Arthur R. Dubs and leading man Robert Logan reteamed for Across the Great Divide, a family-friendly survival story set in the Old West era. Logan plays Zachariah Coop, a dishonest gambler who flees into the wilderness with a posse in pursuit. While making his escape, he stumbles across teenager Holly Smith (Heather Rattray) and her little brother Jason (Mark Edward Hall), orphans trying to make their way toward relatives in Oregon. Coop steals a horse from the kids, but the resourceful Holly gets it back; later, Coop earns the kids’ trust by saving them from Indians and by rescuing Jason from white-water rapids. Faster than you can say “plot contrivance,” the characters join forces during run-ins with bears, snowstorms, wolves, and the like. Although the animal footage and outdoor photography in Across the Great Divide are strong, writer-director Stewart Raffill can’t muster a single original idea. The plot is a string of clichés, the characterizations are vapid, and the dialogue is absurd. At one point, Holly berates Coop thusly: “I’d sooner face 1,000 heathen Blackfeet than deal another second with you, you verminous creature, you thievin’ trickster!” Even if Rattray could act, which she can’t, this stuff would be deadly. Whereas producer Dubs more or less simulated the vibe of a generic Disney movie with the first Wilderness Family outing (its sequels, not so much), he descends into generic mediocrity with Across the Great Divide. On a technical level, the picture is highly competent, but on every other level, it’s utterly negligible, albeit harmless.

Across the Great Divide: FUNKY

The Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1975) & The Further Adventures of the Wilderness Family (1978) & Mountain Family Robinson (1979)

          Writer-producer Arthur R. Dubs carved a minor niche for himself in ’70s by making a series of documentaries and fiction films celebrating the American frontier, and his most enduring creation is a three-movie series about a modern family that moves from Los Angeles to the Rocky Mountains. Harmless and well-meaning, these G-rated pictures boast spectacular location photography and terrific footage of real animals, even if the acting and storytelling leave a bit to be desired. The first and best picture in the series is The Adventures of the Wilderness Family, which does a solid job of emulating the Disney nature-flick formula, but without the sickly-sweet extremes that make some Disney pictures unpalatable.

          The movie begins in smog- and traffic-shrouded L.A., where construction worker Skip Robinson (Robert Logan) realizes he’s had enough. Skip asks his wife, Pat (Susan Damante Shaw), if she’s willing to leave city life behind, and she says yes. The Robinsons pack up their two young children and their dog, and then relocate to a remote lakeside homestead. During the first movie, which takes place over a summer and early fall, the Robinsons build a cabin, survive close encounters with bears and cougars, and take in stray animals including a pair of orphaned bear cubs and a raccoon. They also forge a friendship with a mountain man named Boomer (George “Buck” Flower).

          Excepting some awful songs played over montages, The Adventures of the Wilderness Family tells a simple story without distracting adornment, and the respect both the characters and the filmmakers show for the dangers of the wilderness grounds the piece in a gentle version of reality. Additionally, the film’s breathtaking Colorado locations make it easy to understand why the Robinsons decide, at the end of the picture, to stay in their new home despite the impending arrival of winter and all the challenges that implies.

          Three years passed before Dubs and his crew returned to Colorado to film the lackluster sequel The Further Adventures of the Wilderness Family. Although the second movie supposedly picks up just weeks after the end of the first film, the actress playing the Robinson daughter was recast, and the replacement performer is about six years older than her predecessor. Huh? Worse, the second movie includes the kinds of syrupy excesses Dubs avoided the first time around. Way too much time is spent on cutesy animal antics and sentimental Boomer scenes (his crusty old heart melts when he becomes a surrogate grandfather to the Robinson kids).

          Furthermore, the crises powering the storyline are beyond contrived. The climax is especially absurd—when Skip leaves the house after a blizzard to fetch help for Pat, who is suffering from pneumonia, wolves attack the cabin and one of the Robinsons’ pets knocks over a lamp, starting a fire, so a bedridden Pat and her two children are left alone to fight flames and ravening predators. The only reason the second movie is borderline passable is the presence of still-impressive production values.

          However, it all goes wrong in the third flick, Mountain Family Robinson, which is so lacking in narrative substance that Dubs pads the running time with endless montages of things like full-costume Fourth of July picnics; gardening sessions livened up with square dancing; and idyllic runs through fields of flowers. Worse, the songs—which are never good in Wilderness Family movies—become truly noxious in Mountain Family Robinson, with a cloying vocal group proclaiming again and again how wonderful it is for wonderful people to live a wonderful life in a wonderful place. Yeah, we got it, already.

The Adventures of the Wilderness Family: GROOVY

The Further Adventures of the Wilderness Family: FUNKY

 Mountain Family Robinson: LAME