Offering a beautifully photographed and detailed view of Eskimo life in the Canadian north, this epic adventure stars Anthony Quinn and marks the feature film debut of Peter O'Toole. Quinn plays Inuk, an Eskimo hunter who lives the classic pastoral existence in the frozen tundra with his fellow tribes men. Trouble comes in the form of a priest who knows nothing of Innuit ways. In typical fashion, Inuk, who has gone to a white trading post with his wife, mother-in-law and a load of furs to sell, generously offers the priest the comfort of his own wife. The priest indignantly refuses, Inuk gets offended and in accordance with Eskimo law, slays him. Having broken the white man's law, Inuk and his family flee with the Mounties (one of whom is O'Toole-his normally eloquent voice dubbed into a crude pidgin, something to which the actor strongly objected) in hot pursuit. During the ensuing ordeal, the cross-cultural differences behind the problem surface and in the end, an unexpected form frontier justice is enacted.