Emperor of the North Pole is a 1973 American action adventure film directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine, and Charles Tyner.
It was later re-released on home media (and is more widely known) under the shorter title Emperor of the North, ostensibly chosen by studio executives to avoid being mistaken for a heartwarming holiday story.
A hobo who is a hero to his peers, A-No.-1, manages to hop the train, and the younger, less-experienced Cigaret coattails him closely behind, only to be seen by Shack, who then locks them inside the car from outside, sealing their exit.
Upon realizing their plight, A-No.-1 sets fire to the onboard hay load as a means to exit 'under cover' from the wooden livestock car in which he and Cigaret are now trapped.
As Shack directs the crew to stop the train in an approaching rail yard to have yard workers help extinguish the fire and then catch his stowaways, A-No.-1 evades them all, escapes to the hobo jungle, greets his old pal Smile, who, in turn, rouses, and declares to the assembled huddle that "A-No.-1 is "King of The Road, having just arrived on the 19!".
When this tramp arrives in the hobo jungle to spread the word, A-No.-1 is there, and is confronted with the story that the young braggart Cigaret is taking credit for his deed.
Shack yells to A-No.-1 (now hiding back in the foggy woods) that this prank might cost 10 lives when the fast mail train comes through in just a few minutes.
A-No.-1, by now deeply annoyed by Cigaret's empty boasts, tells the younger man that if he will only listen and allow himself to learn, he has what it takes to become a true hobo, possibly even Emperor of the North Pole.
A-No.-1 and Cigaret climb aboard the undercarriage of one of the freight cars, where Shack (once again) drags a coupler pin on the end of a rope to injure them.
A desperate struggle involving heavy chains, planks of wood, and a fire axe ensues (Cigaret watches from a safe distance, atop the caboose).
[10] Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4 and wrote, "The movie's energies are vast but never focused; what we’re finally left with is too much undirected violence and some superb direction in an uncertain cause.
"[11] In 1983 on an episode of At the Movies, Ebert praised this film's train stunts as being similar or "Something he had seen before" while reviewing Octopussy to disagree with Gene Siskel.
While there is a wealth of violence under Robert Aldrich's forceful direction, the motivating idea is bogged down frequently with time out while Marvin expounds the philosophy and finer points of hobodom to a brash young kid (Keith Carradine) who wants terribly to be accepted.
"[14] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4 and called it "a dismal adventure yarn" with "nothing in the script to make us care about either man.
"[15] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised the film as "a robust, rollicking adventure yarn" with "one of the finest original screenplays to come out of Hollywood this year.
The film's success depends on finding more people who are excited than repelled at the prospect of watching Lee Marvin hit Ernest Borgnine with an axe.
But instead of the muscular rusty claw hammer type direction you’d expect from the big man, Aldrich gives into corny thirties theatrics.
It never occurred to me that the audience would miss the relationship – that Borgnine was the Establishment, that Marvin was the anti-Establishment individualistic character, and that Keith Carradine was the opportunistic youth who would sell out for whatever was most convenient.
The theme ballad, "A Man and a Train", written by Frank De Vol with lyrics by Hal David and sung by Marty Robbins, appears on his album All-Time Greatest Hits (Catalog# 77425), and the CD The Best of Marty Robbins released by Curb Records in January 2006, both featuring a second verse not used in the film.