Before we could turn to the Discovery Channel for ogling cute wittle baby aminals, there were the live-action Disney furball flicks. In 1962, your options for ooohing and aaahing over adorable wolf puppies were limited, and if The Legend of Lobo was your only choice, you took it and were happy. Now that we’ve got other opportunities, the film’s a lot less charming than it surely was back in the Kennedy era.
You’ve heard of the renowned Lobo, haven’t you? Neither had I. The big bad wolf was so notorious a cattle rustler, apparently, that he ended up with a price on his head — $1,000 — greater than most human outlaws could have commanded for their own carcasses. I’ve no idea whether Lobo was a real “king of the wolf pack,” but the criminal legend is the conceit of this live-animal-action “tale of the Old West told in song and story by Rex Allen with the Sons of the Pioneers.” I’d never heard of Rex Allen or the Sons of the Pioneers, either, but apparently he’s a down home, folksy narrator and they’re a down home, folksy singing troupe.
Poor Lobo! He’s not bad; he’s just misunderstood, even by Rex Allen. “It’s a common thing in nature for a male to kill his offspring,” Allen informs us, “if he can get to them.” Of course, Allen is referring to everyone other than the noble and loyal wolf, but still, it makes you wonder what other blinders our trusted narrator is wearing. Like when the cub Lobo befriends an unnamed baby antelope — awwww, babies! — there’s a sniffing disdain in Allen’s voice. “It’s just not natural for enemies to prolong an acquaintance,” Allen informs us, as if there weren’t something to celebrate in the carnivore lying down with the herbivore. Then again, this was the early 1960s, and unthinking intolerance and an appreciation for a completely bogus “natural order” were the law of the day.
There’s precious little sympathy for Lobo, as much as he’s meant to be our hero. Is there even a nod to the fact that these greedy, land-grabbing humans out to get Lobo, who’s only trying to make a living, muscled their way into the wolves’ territory, killed off all the buffalo that were so tasty, and now won’t share their cattle? Of course not. There’s only the Disney-fied lamenting, courtesy of the mournful Sons of the Pioneers, about “man’s bullets” that “have taken your mother away.” Oh, Lobooooo.
This review originally appeared at the now-defunct Apollo Guide.
