The Sea Wolf

Exciting nautical melodrama based on the classic Jack London tale, with Edward G Robinson terrific under movie genius Michael Curtiz's direction. He plays the tormented skipper of the Ghost, trading intellectual barbs with rescued novelist Alexander Knox, and Robinson is just the actor to handle the complexities of his character Wolf Larsen. John Garfield and Ida Lupino are both wasted in relatively minor roles, and their shipboard romance takes clear second place to the captain's fiendish desire to break the spirits of his crew members: cook Barry Fitzgerald is keelhauled. In this shorter version, the nastiness is truncated, however. Warner Bros, never one to waste a good story, remade this out west as Barricade with Raymond Massey as the Larsen character.