page_title: Albert Johnson (criminal)
section_title: Films and music
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Johnson (criminal) / Films and music
caption_attribution_description: English: Aklavik, Northwest Territories, Canada.
context_page_description: Albert Johnson, also known as the Mad Trapper of Rat River, was a fugitive whose actions stemming from a trapping dispute eventually sparked off a huge manhunt in the Northwest Territories and Yukon in Northern Canada. The event became a media circus as Johnson eluded the Royal Canadian Mounted Police team sent to take him into custody, which ended after a 150 mi pursuit lasting more than a month and a shootout in which Johnson was fatally wounded on the Eagle River, Yukon. Albert Johnson is suspected to have been a pseudonym and his true identity remains unknown.
context_section_description: The event has been written about in a song called "The Capture of Albert Johnson," by Wilf Carter; by Stanley G Triggs, in the song "The Mad Trapper Of Rat River", on his 1961 album "Bunkhouse And Forecastle Songs Of The North West" (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings), by Doug Hutton in his 1974 song "Rat River Trapper", and also by Fort Smith, NWT band State of the Art, in their song “River Rat Bluesman” on their 2015 album State of the Earth.
  The Mad Trapper, a highly fictionalized film based on these events, was released in 1972, and in 1975 Challenge to Be Free was released. An American production, it relocated the events to Alaska and referred to Johnson's character merely as "Trapper", or in the theme song, "Trapper Man". It portrayed Johnson as a man who lived in peace and harmony with wild animals, similar to Johnny Appleseed and whose initial interference with other traps was due to rival trappers' inhumane techniques.
  Another highly fictionalized version of Johnson's story appeared in Charles Bronson's 1981 movie Death Hunt. The film reverses the facts, making Johnson a sympathetic, freedom-loving character and changing RCMP hero Edgar Millen from the young and popular figure that he was into a broken-down, middle-aged alcoholic (played by Lee Marvin) who rather than being shot by Johnson actually leads the pursuit to capture him. Furthermore, bush pilot Wop May is represented as a Royal Canadian Air Force captain, Hank Tucker, who is shot down and killed by the posse after Tucker wildly shoots up members of the posse.
  The story is also retold within the song "The Ballad of Trapper John" by Devon Coyote, a Canadian folk rock group based in British Columbia.
caption: Sign near Aklavik
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