Movie Review: Queen of the Yukon (1940)
Synopsis: Single mother Sadie Martin runs a riverboat in Alaska as a way of funding her daughter, Helen's, education at a boarding school. In addition to being a place to drink and gamble, the boat is a vital mode of transportation for miners traveling to and from their claims. When Helen arrives unexpectedly, Sadie, not wanting her daughter to follow in her footsteps, feels compelled to sell her boat to mining executive John Thorne so the two women can return to civilization. However, she ends up sticking around when the empowered Thorne begins stealing her friends' mining claims and killing those who oppose him.
Who's in it? The movie stars Irene Rich, Charles Bickford, June Carlson, Dave O'Brien, Melvin Lang and Tristram Coffin.
Review: I was running a bit behind this morning again and with limited time to pick a movie to watch, I went with the first film that seemed remotely interesting. This ended up being Queen of the Yukon. Overall, it turned out to be a good pick.
Sadie Martin (Rich) was a solid, intriguing character. She seemed to be loved by just about everyone and acted as a surrogate wife/mother to many of her passengers, was willing to put up her quills and fearlessly stand her ground and had a good backstory that explained her character. The fact she was willing to give up everything she worked for to protect Helen (Carlson) spoke volumes.
Helen was equally as intriguing. I absolutely loved how the 18-year-old was so much like her mother, wanting to follow in her footsteps as soon as she learned the truth. Between that and the way she quickly developed a crush on Sadie's love interest, Ace (Bickford) much to the chagrin of her own love interest, Bob (O'Brien) made me wonder what kind of rebellious life she lived while in school.
The strong female characters, in my opinion, made the movie worth watching but the main plot was OK too. Thorne (Lang) proved to be a deceptively good villain, seeming first to just be a callous businessman but later proving to have a criminal side as well. The way he was stealing the claims was also reasonably clever, using accurate land surveys to discredit existing claims, which technically wasn't illegal (though killing people was). It made it a bit unclear just how he'd be stopped.
My only real complaint is I really would have liked to have seen Sadie do more than she did. The movie, as I said, does a good job building her up as a tough-as-nails but caring main character but after she sells the boat, most of the heavy lifting ends up being done by Ace and by the end, she and Helen aren't much more than secondary characters standing around and watching their men save the day. Look, I'm not saying Sadie should have taken Thorne on in a fist fight. I'm just saying there's no reason why she and Helen couldn't have been the ones to chase down her former boat in a canoe and retrieve the stolen land claims.
Final Opinion: I would have liked to have seen Sadie play more of a role in the finale, but the overall movie was entertaining, and I did like the strong mother/daughter dual. In other words, I had no regrets watching it.
My Grade: B+
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Here are some reviews of other movies featuring ships and boats:
Movie Review: The Ninth Passenger (2018)
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