Napoleon and Samantha (1972)

Director: Bernard McEveety
Writer: Stewart Raffill
Stars: Michael Douglas, Will Geer, Arch Johnson, Johnny Whitaker, Jodie Foster, Henry Jones and Major the Lion

Index: The First Thirty.

After Menace on the Mountain, here’s another Disney movie, though this one was made that way and so debuted in theatres rather than on television. However, the visible clash between the poster and the cast list above does warrant quite an explanation.

You see, this is a film about Napoleon, much more than it’s about Samantha, but the two do team up and head out into the mountains with a lion called Major. The artwork on the poster is pretty accurate for the film’s middle third.

Napoleon is Johnny Whitaker, a child actor who had already made an impact, playing Jody Davis on five seasons of Family Affair. If this is anybody’s film, it’s his. Fortunately, he does an excellent job, even at twelve, and I’m looking forward to seeing him again soon playing Tom Sawyer in a film released a year later.

Samantha is his best friend, maybe his only friend other than the grandpa with whom he lives. She’s Jodie Foster, of course, and she was ten here. She has far more to do here than in the film before and the one after put together and she justifies that decision. In fact, she gets the movie rolling by delivering its first line.

If there’s a third star, it’s Major, though the lion was actually more than one lion. It’s easy to spot the changes between the two, as one is young and the other old. The old one, which was clearly the primary lion, is Zamba, and the one that grabbed Foster in his mouth, leaving her with scars on both sides, was Simba. When that happened, I don’t know, because neither Whitaker nor Foster ever seems worried.

Given all that, why Whitaker is fourth billed and Foster leads the co-starring credits, I have no idea. That seems highly unfair to me.

Michael Douglas was presumably the name, so was given top billing, even though this was only his sixth film and only his fourth credited in theatres. Ironically, he was about to become a real star a few months later, courtesy of The Streets of San Francisco on television.

He doesn’t show up until a third of the way into the film, because the adult early on is Will Geer, as Napoleon’s grandfather. He’s a bundle of fun, clearly a teller of tall tales, but he’s not lying when he explains to Napoleon how close to death he is. He’s alive when a clown called Dimitri gives them Major so he can go home to Europe, but he’s dead within half an hour.

He’s all Napoleon has, just as Samantha lives with Gertrude, a housekeeper played by Ellen Corby. However, she does have parents; they merely aren’t there right now. He has nobody else anywhere, only a theoretical uncle, but a letter to him is returned as undeliverable.

That’s why he hires an unemployed man to help bury Grandpa on his favourite hill. And that’s where Michael Douglas comes in, as the hired man, Danny. However, he’s gone again ten minutes later, to go tend someone’s goats, and doesn’t reappear until the final half hour.

To be fair, Danny’s part is bulked up at that point considerably and his escape from jail on a bogus charge to lead the cops a merry chase on a motorcycle so they can arrest a real bad guy is worthy of a starring credit, albeit after Whitaker and Foster. Geer is worthy support so ought to be a co-star. Maybe Arch Johnson deserves that but maybe not. He’s the police chief who has to orchestrate that chase. That’s all he gets to do in this picture.

Whatever the billing in a just world, this is about a pre-teen who’s suddenly orphaned as he takes on responsibility for an old lion with a daily requirement for milk. It roughly breaks down into thirds: the first is Grandpa and a lot of dramatic setup; the second is Napoleon and Samantha taking Major into the mountains to search for Danny; and the third is what Danny does after that until the credits roll.

It’s all enjoyable enough, but it doesn’t help that it feels like three different movies vaguely glued together: a drama, an animal adventure and an action suspense thriller. Whitaker and Foster lead the first two, with Major important in the second, chasing off a mountain lion and a bear and whatever else shows up. Douglas is in charge for the third.

I liked the first third, with two talented kids leading the way and two old hands supporting them. It’s ironic, as they’re played respectively by Grandpa and Grandma Walton, that they’re not given any scenes together, but they’re the support that’s needed, one loose and the other strict. While Geer is gone quickly, Corby has a few excellent scenes to come, calling the cops when Danny comes to tell her about Samantha and, in doing so, sparking the last third of the film, with its shift in tone and focus.

I liked that final third too, which resembles similar scenes in First Blood, merely with all the violence and death stripped down to the levels we expect from a Disney movie. This was shot in John Day, Oregon, while First Blood was shot less than four hundred miles north, just across the border in Hope, British Columbia.

This is easily the weakest third from a basic standpoint of logic, as the goat fields Danny is tending are supposed to be out in the middle of nowhere but every Oregon workman with a hard hat is right there on that wild mountain road as increasingly unbelievable obstacles. It doesn’t help that these police cars are just cars with signs saying POLICE stuck on their sides. Douglas’s stunt double has unmoving hair too.

The real joy is in the second third, when it’s just Napoleon and Samantha, plus Major, who is the only reason they make it through these mountains to play a part in the final third. One thing I adored here was how fearless Napoleon is. Sure, it’s more than a little optimistic, but a lion by your side does help make things a little safer. He just takes everything in stride, to the point that Samantha asks him, “Don’t you ever get scared?” Nothing fazes him at all.

Of course, while Napoleon and Samantha is a film about Napoleon, I’m watching right now for Samantha. Right from the beginning, Jodie Foster gets much more to do than in Menace on the Mountain and, while Samantha is scared, it doesn’t seem like Foster is.

She and Napoleon ride an unsaddled horse; she clearly puts in a lot of hill walking, even acknowledging the studio transportation we don’t see in between scenes; and she acts with and alongside a huge lion for a long time, even after a mauling. She had good intonation in her first picture, but it’s far better here. No wonder she was about to graduate to MGM, as the daughter of the Kansas City Bomber.