Back to God's Country is a 1919 film from Canada, directed by David Hartford.
Dolores LeBeau (Nell Shipman, who also produced the film and co-wrote the screenplay) lives in a cabin somewhere deep in the Canadian wilderness (the names suggest Quebec) with her father Baptiste. One day Peter Baker, a "naturalist and investigator for the Government" who is hiking through the woods to research a book, comes to the LeBeau cabin. Baptiste invites him to stay for a while, and love blooms between Peter and Dolores.
Enter the bad guy. Rydal, a ship's captain and a fugitive wanted for murder, is caught and arrested by a Mountie. However, a second villain only referred to as "the halfbreed" stumbles onto this scene and, out of bad guy solidarity, shoots the Mountie In the Back. Rydal steals the Mountie's uniform and uses it to gain Baptiste's trust and entry into his cabin. Rydal tries to rape Dolores, and winds up murdering her father before escaping.
Cut forward a year. Dolores and Peter have gotten married and settled in Montreal, but Dolores yearns to return to the far north. They book passage on a steamer. Guess who's captain of the ship?
Meanwhile, there is a second plot thread involving a vicious attack dog, "Wapi the Killer", owned by a cruel and abusive master named "Sealskin" Blake. The two plot threads converge when Rydal's ship pulls in at Blake's trading post in the Canadian Arctic.
Believed to be the oldest surviving Canadian feature film.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Criminal History: "Sealskin" Blake, introduced abusing Wapi the dog, is an obvious bad guy. The title card says that he deals in sealskin and furs, "—and other things." Later he appears to be a pimp, as shown when he forces some Inuit women to go onto Rydal's boat.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Blake the villain whips Wapi, which is why Wapi has become a vicious attack dog called "Wapi the Killer".
- Babies Ever After: The film ends with Peter and Dolores having settled down in another wilderness cabin, as Wapi, the family pet, sits by the fire with Peter and Dolores's new baby.
- Beware of Vicious Dog: "Wapi the Killer" is a vicious attack dog who, as the title card specifically explains, is only vicious because he has been abused by human masters. Once Dolores becomes the first human to show him tenderness and affection, Wapi becomes loyal to her.
- Chekhov's Skill: Rydal is introduced on land, on foot, fleeing from the police, but the title card describes him as "a ship master". This sets up the part later in the film when Peter and Dolores book passage to Canada and have the bad luck to book passage on Rydal's ship.
- Dies Wide Open: The mook known only as "the halfbreed", who gets shot at the end of the struggle after Baptiste comes home and catches Rydal trying to rape Dolores.
- Distressed Dude: Peter gets his skull cracked when Rydal drops a ship's boom on him in a Make It Look Like an Accident stunt. That puts him out of commission for the last act of the film, so it's Dolores who has to get a gun, hijack a sled and dogsled team, and get herself and Peter to safety.
- Friend to All Living Things: When Peter sees Dolores enjoying the company of a raccoon, Baptiste describes his daughter as a "friend of all things". Later Dolores literally hugs a bear cub, and after that a porcupine crawls right up onto her bunk. And at the climax Wapi the attack dog fights to save her.
- Impersonating an Officer: Rydal dons a Mountie's coat and uses it to worm his way into Baptiste's household.
- Never Trust a Trailer: Much
◊ of the◊ advertising◊ for this film implied Nell Shipman's nude scene to be more explicit than it really was. - Skinnydipping: This movie is best remembered by film historians for the scene where Nell Shipman bathes in a river in the nude. It's basically Shoulders-Up Nudity and from a distance at that, but it's still a more explicit scene than would be allowed in films after the imposition of The Hays Code in 1934.
- Snowed-In: Dolores and Peter get stuck in Blake's trading post when the onset of winter ice locks Rydal's ship up (which Rydal planned for) and land access is mostly cut off by snow. Dolores winds up having to make a difficult 200-mile passage by dogsled.
- Split Screen: After a title card says that Dolores misses her home in the wilderness, there is a split screen effect. The bottom center of the frame shows Dolores in her Montreal house, looking pensive. The other 5/6 of the screen shows a scene of her in the forest, by a stream, frolicking with a bear cub while a couple of adult bears splash about in the water.
- Time Skip: A skip of a year after Baptiste's death finds Peter and Dolores married and living in Montreal, and Dolores wishing to go back to the wilderness.
- Traumatic Haircut: A Chinese gold miner has his queue hacked off by a drunk white person in a bar. When the Chinese man looks to fight back, the white man kills him.
