Thankfully, I had already outgrown films like The Great Adventure by the time it arrived on Anglophone screens. I'm sure lots of younger boys were less fortunate and ended up seeing this feature, which more aptly should have been titled An Awfully Minor Adventure. Young Jim Chambers (Fernando Romer) meets cute with Buck the Wonder Wolf, who saves his life when a pack of less friendly wolves attack the lad somewhere in the snowy wastelands of the Yukon. Jim's father (Attilio Dottesio) wants to put the wounded creature down, but young Jim makes with the mopey face and Dad relents. Soon Dad is dead and Jim and Buck are off on a cross country trek with sister Mary (Elisabetta Virgili) and assorted grownups. Joan Collins and Jack Palance show up in the third reel, both thankfully undubbed, and the film features the motliest imaginable tribe of Native Americans as villainous 'red devils'. Good photography by Jose Aguayo and an excellent Stelvio Cipriani score move The Great Adventure from 'unwatchable' into 'harmless and mildly diverting' territory.
Review of The Great Adventure
