Arctic Fury

As the film opens, government official Dan Riss explains that the story to come is an incredible-but-true tale.

A doctor, [Alfred Delcambre], who served as a U.S. Navy medical officer during World War II, settles in Alaska with his wife Martha Barlow, [Eve Miller], and daughter Emily Barlow, [Gloria Petroff], to open a private practice. In a sparsely populated 1949 frontier, he frequently pilots an open-cockpit monoplane to reach remote corners of the wilderness and deliver essential medical aid. When he learns of an Inuit tribe afflicted with a contagious disease unknown to them, he undertakes an extended flight to examine their condition. But engine trouble forces a crash-landing in the Colville River region of northern Alaska, and he barely climbs ashore before a hungry polar bear and an avalanche of falling glacial ice overwhelm the scene.

Having memorized a map to the Inuit village, shown him by Mack, [Merrill McCormick], a Sourdough fur trapper, he begins a stubborn overland trek. Along the way, he takes shelter briefly in a cave already inhabited by a mother black bear with two cubs. After chasing the mother off, he discovers the cubs and, choosing to help them, he carries them along on the journey, recording in his pilot’s log that he has named them Tom and Jerry.

Wreckage from the doctor’s plane is eventually found, renewing hope for his survival among both his wife and Mack. Believing the doctor is headed toward the Inuit village, the trapper heads there in his boat, arriving just in time to rescue the doctor and the bear cubs from feral sled dogs driven half-mad by hunger—the dogs’ Inuit owners having fallen ill from the same unidentified disease.

The doctor later replaces his damaged aircraft with a new one of the same type, continuing to serve as a lifeline in the rugged north. The narrator concludes the tale by noting how the Inuit have kept the story of this survival alive as a campfire legend, retold with reverent awe, while members of other tribes look up at the passing-by plane with gratitude and respect.

Last Updated: October 07, 2025 at 09:21