Laughing at your comment, sounded really fun 
Havenāt seen the film myself
I didnāt even know these White Fang movies even existed until relatively recently
A peculiar contribution to the SW genre, donāt you think so?
Certainly, ashame the quality in each of them is regarded as very low though.
Merli had one to.
I have it, havenāt given it a chance as of yet.
Viewed this one yesterday on a widescreen Dutch vhs (Eagle 6). Solid cast, good directing, nice cinematography. But overall it feels like a kiddie movie with graphic violence inserted. Weird. Overall still 3 stars though.
I agree with Sebastian that this is not a western. At least, it takes a lot of imagination viewing it as such.
My review here (Dutch):
Merliās White Fang Iāve seen too. Feels a tad more like a western. A bit trashier and pretty much a ripoff of the Fulci one. The cleavage shots of Hahn are probably the best thing about it. The dvd is of very bad quality.
Challenge to White Fang starts right from where White Fang ended. Characters are not re-introduced so you need to see that before the sequel, otherwise itās going to be very confusing. I made the mistake of wathing the sequel not remembering much about the first. Anyway, itās quite disappointing, storyline jumps from situation to another in a very strange way and some shooting locations look very cheap and not like Alaska at all. Final 30 minutes are the best part, with exciting sledge race shot in Canada. I think that second unit director Joe DāAmato was responsible of all scenes shot there while Fulci was in Italy. At least these scenes have all DāAmatoās trademarks - handheld camera POV shots for example - that sadly are not present during first hour. Maybe I should re-watch both films but for now I give White Fang *** while Challenge to White Fang gets only **.
This is probably my least favourite Fulci movieā¦ the dog attack scenes were hard to watch, so realistic and they just went on and on. I also donāt think this is a western unless you consider Lassie Come Home and Old Yeller to be westerns.
saw this last night. quite liked it although it is nothing special. as others have said a good cast. not sure who it was aimed at as is too violent at times for family audiences at the time.as iāve said before not a great fan of fulci but i prefer his westerns to most of his horror films. watchable overall.
I saw the end of this last night. So I canāt really say much about this. I think, Nero and Harmstorf anre a good cast, but they look too nice to really call this flick a SW. It could be worse, just watch the 1991 wilf fang version and you know what I meanā¦
yeeeee, Zanna Bianca
this movie was like Komissar Rex :-X but with some touchy moments, i liked scene at the end,
when Franco jumped from a vessel to rescue Zanna Bianca
the main villainĀ“s name was Beauty Smith, heh
all in all, not a gem this movie and i was expecting from Fulci something different, but at least, i didnĀ“t fall asleep
probably the best depiction of Jack LondonĀ“s stuff was The Call of the Wild: Dog of the Yukon with Rutger Hauer
An average soundtrack and nice actingā¦
at least this wasnāt so boringā¦
Can someone confirm the new dvd has indeed got an English soundtrack. Here it says it has, but the Amazon says Italian and German.
I am also interested in the 3L Vertriebs 2016 release. Here it lists English and Italian with no subtitles. For a DVD from Germany? On Amazon the listing says German and Italian, which makes more sense. Can anyone confirm this? Have you found out, Farmer J?
There is a US release by something called āCheezy.ā If that isnāt off-putting enough, one of the three reviews on Amazon mentions āpoor quality release.ā Iād prefer to try the 3L version.
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I saw this on UK Amazon Prime. Print not that good. I havenāt read the novel but I read a synopsis of it on Wikipedia and the film doesnāt follow it that much introducing several new characters. Thereās six credited for the screenplay although I suspect a few are there for co-production contractual reasons and the real force is the legendary Harry Alan Towers aka Peter Welbeck. The English dubbing is quite poor (studio room echos a lot) and Nero doesnāt dub himself although I think John Steiner does.
Iād definitely include it as a European western. Most of the action takes place in a gold rush town run by Steiner playing a Snidely Whiplash character. Nero is a journalist seeking to expose Steiner but basically doesnāt do anything. As others have commented this is supposed to be a kids movie but is quite violent and mean spirited. Towards the end two of the major characters are murdered for no real reason other than itās a Fulci movie. Fernando Ray plays one of his numerous priests here a drunkard in Steinerās power who gets shot in the head at point blank range by Steiner. Fulci keeps the actual killing off-screen but follows it up with a CU of the bullet wound. Thatās a bit much for the children I thought. There are also 2 long animal fights; one dog on dog and another dog vs bear where a man in a bear suit seems to be doubling for the bear. We also get a fairly graphic stabbing of a sympathetic character and subsequent removal of the knife from the wound in close up. Also in the cast are Verna Lisi as a nun, Carole Andre from Face to Face as a saloon singer, Daniel Martin and John Bartha as yet another law officer.
I didnāt think this was particularly well made with lots of changing film stock for outdoor scenes and shots of White Fang running around. The Prime print was worn and had lots of imposed fades to black for advert breaks. I was surprised to see how much money this took in Italy.
Both this and the sequel are out in Germany on Blu Ray with English dubs.
I read the novel White Fang which cost 50 pence for me to download on my Kindle App. Bargain!
In the novel White Fang (WF) is a total bastard who spends the first half of the book murdering loads of other animals, especially other dogs. There are loads and loads of fights and killings. He gets sold to Beauty Smith and forced to fight other dogs (rather than stolen and there is no murder of the Charlie equivalent), Eventually, WF is rescued by a mineralist called Weedon Scott, who manages to pacify him and the last quarter of the book is set in California at Scottās country house where White Fang becomes civilised. Apparently WFs ājourneyā is meant to parallel the authorās own journey as he was in some kind of youth gang. In the film, WF is basically a slightly more violent version of Lassie and most of the first half of the book and the entire last quarter has been removed. WF is nice to a little boy throughout and only gets violence when provoked. Most of the last half of the film deals with Smithās shenanigans whereas in the book after Scott takes WF from Smith, Smith appears only once thereafter. The various murders in the film of the boyās father, the priest and the singer are not in the novel, not least because the priest and the singer donāt appear in the novel. So, a lot has been changed. And as noted above, the last section of the book is set in California whereas the film remains in the Yukon and has an ending which looks as if it was inspired by the ending of Paint Your Wagon as the miners leave for another gold rush.
Interestingly, the novel did remind me of Samuel Fullerās White Dog (1982), which I think must have been inspired by the book White Fang, although Fuller is not into happy endings and his movie is about racism.
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Thanks for sharing. Iāve never read the books but seen the filmsā¦I didnāt realise how different the first one was to the source material.
The Hollywood 1991 film version with Ethan Hawke (who plays a character who is a composite of 2-3 people in the book) resembles more the Fulci version in overall plot rather than the novel (although it doesnāt have the murders). Hawkeās character is a gold prospector.
White Fang and itās sequel Challenge to White Fang are highly entertaining pseudo-Spaghetti westerns. Both of them have good performances, locations, photography and action scenes. The dogfights seem real and are vicious, and would not be filmed today in such a way. The standouts are John Steinerās hammy performance as Beauty Smith. Nero is always watchable, but apparently he and Fulci did not get along.
I also quite like White Fang to the Rescue, White Fang and the Hunter and White Fang and the Gold Diggers.
I had a hard time stomaching the fight in the first one.
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