Emperor of the North (1973): This got recommended to me a couple years back, something like that, but it had just sat in my instant queue— I don’t know how long it’s been there but I finally noticed it; couldn’t sleep, so. 6 years after the Dirty Dozen, and a year before the Longest Yard, Robert Aldrich and Lee Marvin teamed up for a hobo epic. Lee Marvin plays A No. 1 (I guess John Carpenter was a fan), basically the best of the Great Depression hobos (the Great Depression, when “hobos ruled the land”), facing off against a crazy-eyed Ernest Borgnine, playing a sadistic railroad man who takes deranged pleasure in brutally murdering the hobos who dare to ride his train. Keith Carradine plays a younger, new jack hobo.
It’s an old hobo fighting an old corporate-sponsored murderer, both trying to stave off feeling threatened by the next generation through the magic of railroad violence.
Lee Marvin’s first scene in the movie might be pretty much the best character introduction you could want out of a Lee Marvin movie— Lee Marvin has a really swell first scene. That scene’s not on youtube though, somehow, but the weirdly jaunty theme song is. I like that in the 70’s, there weren’t just movies about hobo violence, but they also had happy, toe-tapping soundtracks. Trailer.
