BLAME CANADA: NEGLECTED MOVIES AND TELEVISION SHOWS FROM THE GREAT WHITE NORTH

This blog post combines my recurring Forgotten Television segments with my reviews of neglected movies. These items are all from Canada.

RANGE RYDER AND THE CALGARY KID (1977) – (Also known as The Adventure of the Dinosaur Badlands.) A 14-year-old MIKE MYERS co-starred in this Canadian children’s program that was also aired in the early 1980s on Nickelodeon. (Hey, Nick even showed episodes of The Uncle Floyd Show in its early years.) Myers (in headband) played the Calgary Kid, sidekick to David Ferry’s Range Ryder.

This program was an odd mix of Land of the Lost and The Valley of Gwangi. Range Ryder and the Calgary Kid were cowboy heroes in Canada’s Old West who discovered a hidden valley in which dinosaurs still lived.

Myers and Ferry rode fake horses in front of chroma-key backgrounds. The dinosaurs were puppets and a toy train was passed off as the real thing. Also starred Janet-Laine Green, pictured between Myers and Ferry. 

MEN OF STEEL (1977) – Also released under the title The Fighting Men, this telefilm added a uniquely Canadian touch to the trope of bitter antagonists forced to work together to survive under hazardous conditions.

Wayne Archer, an Anglo-Canadian and Jean-Claude Archambeault, a Franco-Canadian are military men who come to blows during an argument over whether to watch Kojak or election returns from Quebec. (I think we’ve all been there.) While that may make this 78-minute production sound like a comedy it’s actually deadly serious.

The two men wind up assigned to Goose Bay but the plane taking them there crashes in the wintry wilderness. The pilot is killed in the crash, leaving the injured Wayne and Jean-Claude to set aside their differences and try to stay alive.

GOLDENROD (1976) – Also known as Glory Days, this movie starred veteran tough guy Tony Lo Bianco as Jesse Gifford, a former champion of Canadian Rodeo who is now virtually crippled from career-ending injuries. When his wife, played by Gloria Carlin, leaves him for an old flame Jesse must rearrange his life to accommodate the raising of his two sons on his own.

Once again, the Canadian setting adds just enough freshness to what may seem like a run of the mill drama. Jesse and his sons struggle through poverty and attempts at farming while young up and comers from the region bank on the rodeo circuit as a ticket out of the depressed area. The title refers to Jesse’s efforts to win back his wife. 

Donnelly Rhodes appears in support, Joe Thornton sneaks in as a barker at the Calgary Stampede and Donald Pleasence EMBODIES the cliche of “a performance that will surprise you” as a gruff old Canadian farmer. Believe it or not, the usually urbane Pleasence nails it! 

THE HOUNDS OF NOTRE DAME (1980) – Powerful drama and character study which chronicles a day and a half in the life of Father Athol Murray, an iconic figure in Canada. Murray, affectionately known as “Pere,” was a hard-drinking, chain-smoking maverick who founded Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Saskatchewan out of what was originally just a string of cabins. He also coached the hockey team.   

What Knute Rockne was to American football and Bobby Knight was to basketball, Father Athol was to hockey and his Notre Dame College Hounds produced over a hundred future NHL players. Murray was also a conservative political activist and The Hounds of Notre Dame is set in 1940 as World War Two rages and Father Athol makes known his opposition to the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.

Murray defies his superiors by continuing to speak out on the CCF while running the school and coaching the Hounds. Thomas Peacocke stars as the volatile Pere Athol Murray, known for his boast “I love God, Canada and hockey – not always in that order.”   

JACK LONDON’S TALES OF THE KLONDIKE (1981) – This Canadian production presented seven 52-minute episodes dramatizing selected short stories by Jack London set during the Klondike Gold Rush. Orson Welles narrated, with figures like John Candy, Stephen McHattie and Robert Carradine starring.

The episodes: Finis (May 16th) – Starred McHattie and Geoffrey Bowes.  In a Far Country (May 23rd) – Starred Robert Carradine and Scott Hylands.   The One Thousand Dozen (May 30th) – Starred Neil Munro and Ray Whelan.   The Race for Number One (June 6th) – Starred Ted Dillon and Sharon Noble.

Scorn of Women (June 13th) – Starred Kerrie Keene and Linda Sorensen.   The Unexpected (June 20th) – Starred John Candy and Cherie Lunghi.   And Love of Life (June 27th) – Starred Richard Fitzpatrick and Doug McGarth.        

CHAUTAUQUA GIRL (1984) – A movie made for Canadian television. The story is set in 1921 Fairville, Alberta and stars Janet-Laine Green (see above) as Sally Driscoll, who is touring Western Canada on behalf of America’s Chautauqua organization of educational speakers and presentations.   

Driscoll falls in love with Neil McCallum (Terence Kelly), a Fairville widower who is running as a United Farmers of Alberta candidate in the upcoming general election. Amid Neil’s campaign and Sally’s harried efforts to pull together a Chautauqua presentation their romance blossoms.

In addition to the love story, Chautauqua Girl also presents impressive reproductions of Chautauqua speakers and performers. The telefilm shows how the organization helped bring geographically separated communities together figuratively via outside speakers long before radio and television would take over that role. 

FOR MORE FORGOTTEN TELEVISION CLICK HERE.