Never Cry Wolf is a 1983 film adap­ta­tion of Far­ley Mowat’s 1963 book of the same name. The film fea­tures Charles Mar­tin Smith as Tyler (a fic­tion­al­ized ver­sion of Mowat), a young biol­o­gist sent to study the impact of wolves on the cari­bou pop­u­la­tion in north­ern Canada. Tyler dis­cov­ers that the wolves sub­sist mainly on small mam­mals, and that their rep­u­ta­tion as ruth­less killers of larger ani­mals is com­pletely unfounded.

A while ago some­one (I can’t remem­ber who now — tell me if it was you) sug­gested that I watch Never Cry Wolf because it promi­nently fea­tures a bas­soon. This is an inser­tion of the film­mak­ers, though — there is no ref­er­ence to a bas­soon in Mowat’s book. In any case, the won­ders of Net­flix brought the movie to us, and we watched it a cou­ple of week­ends ago.

The gov­ern­ment agency that funds Tyler’s expe­di­tion sends all sorts of unnec­es­sary equip­ment with him — pal­lets full of toi­let paper, crates of gov­ern­ment carbon-copy forms, etc. But Tyler him­self brings along a seem­ingly super­flu­ous item: his bas­soon. But, shortly after he and his gear are dropped off by a bush pilot (Brian Den­nehy), he finds a use for it. Stand­ing alone in the mid­dle of a frozen lake at dusk, Tyler hears the howls of wolves. He grabs the clos­est weapon-like thing he can find with­out any seri­ous unpack­ing — the boot joint of his bas­soon — and hides under his upturned canoe:

Tyler (and his bas­soon) escape unscathed, and he man­ages to set up camp and begin his obser­va­tions. He befriends two Inuit men, Mike (Sam­son Jorah) and Ootek (Zachary Itti­mang­naq). They help him sur­vive the inhos­pitable cli­mate, and aid in his study of the wolves and cari­bou. A cou­ple of times in the movie, we see the three sit­ting out­side together in the evening, Tyler play­ing his bas­soon. He tries to mimic the howls and cries of dis­tant wolves:

At one point, Mike gives the bas­soon a try, too:

I won’t say any­thing more about the plot, but the sound­track is worth men­tion­ing. As one might expect with so much on-screen time for Tyler’s bas­soon, there’s quite a bit of bas­soon in the movie’s music, as well. Rufus Olivier, cur­rently the prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist of the San Fran­cisco Opera, plays throughout.

Every bas­soon­ist should see this movie, and I’d prob­a­bly also rec­om­mend it even if it didn’t have any double-reed con­nec­tion. The film is beau­ti­fully shot, and the arc­tic scenery is gor­geous. The plot is also quite com­pelling (although, I won­der how accu­rate the tagline “A True Story” is). So, add it to your Net­flix queue!

P.S. — Thanks to the won­ders of Wikipedia, I am also happy to report that Never Cry Wolf “is also note­wor­thy for being the first Walt Dis­ney film to show naked adult buttocks.”