Yellowstone Cubs

1963

Adventure / Family

Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 80%
IMDb Rating 6.7/10 10 346 346

bear yellowstone cubs

Director

Charles L. Draper Photo
Charles L. Draper

Top cast

Rex Allen Photo
Rex Allen as Narrator
Joe Way Photo
Joe Way as Joe the Ranger

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by planktonrules 6 / 10

A look at a bygone ere for bears at Yellowstone...thank goodness.

I have been to Yellowstone National Park twice and spent a lot of time in there...and loved every minute of it. However, although we spend a total of about 2-3 weeks there, we only very rarely saw any bears. This isn't a complaint but I am mentioning this because the bears and the way they acted in "Yellowstone Cubs" is clearly an antique...and such bear/human interactions simply don't take place there today like they did in this film. In the film, you see idiots actually hand feeding and even kissing wild black bears!!!! Not surprisingly, sometimes the bears ripped people's faces off....and eventually the Park Service changed the rules and clamped down on such idiotic behaviors by people. Seeing the stupid folks standing only inches from these wild animals will probably cause your blood pressure to shoot up a few hundred points!! I know that my daughter was angry as she watched the people behaving horribly.When the story begins, you see a large mother black bear and her two cubs, who the narrator dubbed Tubby and Tuffy. They seem pretty cute and watching them scampering about is pretty entertaining. Soon, however, the park is open for the season and that's when the problems start. Idiotic people start interacting with them and eventually the two cubs are separated from their mother due to a really moronic family that decided to hand-feed the mother...as the cubs climb into the people's trailer. Soon the cubs find themselves at a camp ground and they run amok. Will they ever find their mother??This film is an antique in many ways. I mentioned how in the old days, folks foolishly interacted with bears. This, fortunately has stopped...though I have still recently seen folks standing only a couple feet from Bison and Big Horn Sheep at the park!! The other way it's an antique is that instead of being a documentary about wildlife, the film is heavily orchestrated...placing bears around people and situations and creating a story around it. They anthropomorphize the bears--making them seem human-like in their actions and naming them furthers this outdated method of filmmaking. It's also horrifying that they likely placed the bears around various geothermals or ate movie film in order to make the film look cool! Or, if they didn't place them there, instead of shooing them away, they let the cubs muck about the mud pots and steam (which could have scalded them) and campgrounds! Crazy, huh?!So is this worth seeing? Well, yes and no. It is a great look at the bad old days of human-bear interaction. You can see people (and even a ranger) doing some VERY stupid things with the bears! You'll likely be shocked as you watch. But it also isn't all that educational as instead of learning about bears and their behaviors in the wild, it's more about telling a story and entertaining. Very 1963 in its sensibilities but still worth seeing...particularly if you are planning on visiting our national parks, particularly Yellowstone.By the way, for fun, show this film to park rangers and watch them to see if they have strokes or heart attacks! I am sure, at the very least, you'll hear an ear-full from them about the filmmakers and the crazy things they did with wild animals to make this movie 'more entertaining'.
Reviewed by mccgarden 8 / 10

First hand report

I was in this movie, it was interesting to see how it was developed. Many of the scenes were shot at Old Faithful Inn and in the surrounding areas. A long piano playing scene in the Inn was not used. One of my scenes showed me putting up a tent at the bottom of a hill and at the edge of a lake. This site was not far from the Old Faithful Inn. Two different hills were used for the filming. Sometimes the trailer was towed down a trail and the crew would pitch a log under the trailer to make it bounce, and the girls would throw things after the trailer. I did not like the 2nd site as it was steeper, and the loose trailer came at me very fast. I had to jump out of the way. On the last filming I dived in the water. I lost the hammer. I did not know that I could dive like that until I saw the movie when it played in Pocatello, Idaho. The grass had been sprayed green and there was ice on the water. The cast would go to a rangers cabin where a nearby hot pool could be used for bathing. The last time we went, I said, "We must be crazy, we're taking our clothes off in a blizzard." Many Yellowstone park savages (employees) were in the movie. I bought Chuck Draper a cowboy hat. [email protected] The scene noted by another reviewer where the bears tear up the kitchen was a re-shoot for more footage of destruction. A total of eight cubs was used to get the cub scenes. I think the Old Faithful employee kitchen area was used for filming.
Reviewed by honyoker-1 8 / 10

My Family was in this movie

While watching the Sunday Disney Movie one evening, our dad jumped up and yelled the "There's the 'Diaper Daddy' (dad always gave his vehicles names - from 1959 to 1964 he had at least 2 kids in diapers)! There in the background, was our red Chevy station wagon driving past with a large piece of plastic flapping in the wind. A couple of summers prior, we went on vacation, traveling from Valentine, Nebraska to Seattle Washington, stopping various places, including Yellowstone to see 'Old Faithful'. It seems that we were stopping at least once a day during the trip to re-tie the plastic to keep our luggage dry. By the time the movie had gone from the theater to the television, it had been a couple of years and we no longer had 'Diaper Daddy' and was driving 'Tator digger' because it bottomed out every time it hit a bump in the road. Bob C. Hookham
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