{"id":39416,"date":"2025-07-19T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=39416"},"modified":"2025-07-18T22:00:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T02:00:14","slug":"39416","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=39416","title":{"rendered":"“Emperor of the North” (1973) directed by Robert Aldrich; starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and Keith Carradine \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Emperor of the North <\/i><\/b>(1973)<\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0 Robert Aldrich<\/strong><\/p>\n

Screenplay: Christopher Knopf<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stars: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine, Charles Tyner, Malcolm Atterbury, Simon Oakland, Harry Caesar, Hal Baylor, Matt Clark, Joe Di Reda, Liam Dunn, Robert Foulk, Jim Goodwin, Sid Haig, Karl Lukas\u00a0<\/strong> and Elisha Cook Jr.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tagline:\u00a0 You can ride Shack’s train and live you will be Emperor of the North<\/em><\/p>\n

The Plot…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Great Depression is in full swing.\u00a0 A sub-culture of hobos travel the country by freight-hopping.\u00a0 That is, they jump on trains without paying and hide in freight cars.\u00a0 These vagabonds would often help themselves to whatever was being transported.<\/p>\n

In an effort to keep the drifters off their trains, the railroad companies hired thuggish conductors.\u00a0 These de facto enforcers would throw the hobos off the trains usually after a good beating. If the bums were lucky they lived with just bruises or broken bones.<\/p>\n

The meanest and toughest of all railroad conductors was a brute known as Shack.\u00a0 No hobo ever was able to ride the #19.\u00a0 Most didn’t even try.\u00a0 Shack carried a hammer as a matter of course.\u00a0 He also had other tricks he used to maim or kill anyone who dared try to ride his train.\u00a0 His reputation was perfect.<\/p>\n

Then A-#1 came along.\u00a0 Word was A-#1 got the best of Shack and rode the #19.\u00a0 Of course no one was sure.\u00a0 Especially since a young drifter, who called himself Cigaret was claiming it wasn’t A-#1 who outsmarted Shack.\u00a0 It was him.<\/p>\n

Now A-#1 has put out word that he’s going to ride the #19 all the way to Portland.\u00a0 Shack’s heard.\u00a0 He and his hammer will be waiting.<\/p>\n

Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emperor of the North<\/em> was originally titled Emperor of the North Pole<\/em>.\u00a0 The title was changed because studio execs thought people would think it was a Christmas movie. Emperor of the North Pole<\/em> was a hobo term explained in the movie.<\/p>\n

Some posters for the movie had the tagline “Lee Marvin & Ernest Borgnine meet in the fight of the century”<\/em>.\u00a0 Their fight lives up to the tagline.\u00a0 It is one of the most brutal movie fights up to that time.<\/p>\n

Emperor of the North<\/em> is underrated.<\/p>\n

Emperor of the North (1973) <\/i><\/b>rates 4 of 5 stars<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emperor of the North (1973) Director:\u00a0 Robert Aldrich Screenplay: Christopher Knopf Stars: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine, Charles Tyner,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,54,65,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-movies","category-trivia","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39416"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39423,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39416\/revisions\/39423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}