{"id":2675,"date":"2011-04-09T12:57:30","date_gmt":"2011-04-09T16:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2675"},"modified":"2011-07-10T16:48:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-10T20:48:22","slug":"dvd-courage-of-lassie-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2675","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Courage of Lassie (1946)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>C<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Good<\/p>\n

Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: August 24, 2004<\/p>\n

Genre: Family \/ Lassie \/ Drama \/ War<\/p>\n

Synopsis: Laddie the dog runs away from his master and becomes a war dog in 1943.<\/p>\n

Special Features: 2 1943 cartoons: Droopy in “Northwest Hounded Police” + Tom & Jerry in “Solid Serenade” \/ Theatrical and Reissue Trailers<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Lassie\u2019s third film may rank as one of the oddest, largely because it morphs from a saccharine girl + dog love story into a wartime drama about post-traumatic stress disorder for WWII vets, with a courtroom wrap-up.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, the script by Lionel Houser (A Christmas in Connecticutt<\/strong>) is ballsy for trying to balance kiddie, family, and adult themes into a popular G-rated franchise, but it\u2019s also a crazy quilt, and yet each segment switches tracks at points where the characters are clearly trapped in a rut; the shifts aren\u2019t exactly natural, but they\u2019re needed to keep the story going.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s first 20 mins<\/em>. have a pup, newly abandoned by its mom and siblings, stranded on one side of what\u2019s apparently an island, where it slowly grows up with Nature\u2019s children \u2013 bears, wabbits, blackbirds, squirrels, skunks, and more \u2013 before it runs from a wolf and is sent by the rapids to a new lake.<\/p>\n

There it encounters little Kathie (Elizabeth Taylor), who\u2019s convinced it\u2019s her perfect ticket towards convincing her family she ought to have her own sheep herd. When she gives chase, the dog is mistakenly shot by two hunters (one played by an adult Carl \u2018Alfalfa\u2019 Switzer), so she takes him to her friend Harry (Wizard of Oz<\/strong>\u2019 Frank Morgan), a veteran sheepherder who lives a quiet, solitary life while his son is an enlisted man in WWII.<\/p>\n

When the dog recuperates, Kathie names him Bill (making the film\u2019s title a cheat. \u2018Courage of Bill\u2019 is more like it), and the two prove their mettle when they rescue a group of stranded sheep during a terrible winter storm. Everything goes just ducky for Kathie until Bill is struck by a truck during a mundane herding effort, and the drivers hastily take him into town for medical aide rather than searching for his owner \u2013 little Kathie, munching an apple at the top of an apple tree.<\/p>\n

Perhaps she should\u2019ve been working, and not passed off her job to Bill, but the dog is eventually nursed by to health, and when he\u2019s never claimed (Kathie doesn\u2019t get no newspapers out in God\u2019s country), he\u2019s donated to the War Dog school, where he\u2019s trained to fight alongside marines against the Japanese in the Phillipines under his new name, Duke.<\/p>\n

Duke accomplishes a daring rescue, but the trauma turns him nutty, and when he\u2019s shipped back for rehabilitation, he escapes, sensing he\u2019s close to Kathie. Unfortunately, Duke needs nourishment, so he goes against his herding ways and picks off chickens from locals. One day they find him and give chase with their shotguns, and Duke \/ Bill runs past Kathie, who again gives chase and finds him hiding out in a cave.<\/p>\n

Initially, Bill\u2019s trauma has him growling , and Kathie trips and conks herself out, but seeing her lifeless, makes Bill snap again, and he recognizes the girl whom he last saw more than a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Kathie tries to keep Bill under the local law\u2019s radar, but he\u2019s eventually seen, and a court trial has him almost convicted of malice and destined for destruction until old Harry sees the military tattoo on Bill\u2019s ear, and gives a successful plea to the judge, reading off Bill\u2019s remarkable war record.<\/p>\n

Now healed, Bill returns to Kathy, and stops her incessant sobbing under a tree, where her salty tears were starting to corrode the oak\u2019s tender root system.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s \u2018Courage of Bill,\u2019 and it\u2019s four films in one: Kipling\u2019s Jungle Story<\/strong> in the first act, a straight heartwarming Lassie tale in the second, a war drama in the third, and a plea for Americans to understand and help war vets transition into civilian life in the fourth act\u2019s PTSD<\/a> drama (released the same year as the definitive PSTD postwar film, The Best Years of Our Lives<\/strong>) before it snaps back to a Lassie film.<\/p>\n

MGM\u2019s original trailer actually treats the story as hard drama with a sweeping, melodramatic Lassie score, whereas the 1972 kid matinee trailer not only edits everything down into a G-rated action montage, but omits any war material, and the god references tied to a speech Harry gives Kathie before she agrees to accept Bill as her own:<\/p>\n

HARRY: A man goes to church to talk to a god he can\u2019t see, but a dog, he can see his god that he loves\u2026 and talk to him and obey his commands all day long. You\u2019re Bill\u2019s god\u2026 and all he wants is to love you and have you tell him what you want him to do.<\/em><\/p>\n

KATHIE: You mean I\u2019m really\u2026 what you said\u2026 to him?<\/em><\/p>\n

HARRY: Yes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

KATHIE: It\u2019s a very odd feeling\u2026 to be someone\u2019s god.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a peculiar speech where one would think the Catholic Legion of Decency might have objected to a person being placed on a god-like scale, even if it\u2019s towards a dog, yet it did fit in with the film\u2019s ongoing theme of loyalty and devotion, fidelity to being a good citizen, and Harry\u2019s courtroom defense speech to the judge (which is really well-written and performed in such compact simplicity) harkens back to the god speech, and is used to symbolize close the chapter on Bill\u2019s dark past:<\/p>\n

HARRY: And so I ask you\u2026 on his record as a first-class soldier, to give him a break Let me take him back to the little girl who is his god\u2026 and who loves him so much.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1946, this faux Lassie film (actor-dog Pal playing Bill while billed as Lassie in Courage of Lassie<\/strong> when the character\u2019s really Bill \/ Duke played by Pal) was tailored for the times, but as the \u201972 reissue trailer on the DVD attests, the film had to be resold as a classic family film starring Elizabeth Taylor \u2018when she was young!\u2019 instead of a drama. The wartime sequence was hardly cutting edge, particularly in light of bloody WWII dramas such as Beach Red<\/strong> (1967), but a war film isn\u2019t something the kids would want after Lassie had been on TV from 1954-1973.<\/p>\n

The character actors are all uniformly solid, whereas teenage Taylor is still learning the ropes of her trade, being wide-eyed and Happy or Sobbing Immensely with Quivery Voice and Facial Redness. Pal (Lassie \/ Bill \/ Duke) is excellent, and he\u2019s the only reason the genre swaps aren\u2019t so jarring. (Mind you, it is unnerving to see Pal and other dogs in the war unit \u2013 largely German Shepherds \u2013 performing around explosions and gunfire. A more detailed dramatization of this training occurs in the propaganda drama War Dogs<\/strong>, made a year earlier by Monogram.)<\/p>\n

Warner Home Video\u2019s DVD offers a generally clean print with minor visible digital compression in open sky shots, and the print gets a bit soft in focus during the last few reels.<\/p>\n

Extras include the aforementioned 1946 and 1972 trailers, and a pair of cartoons from 1946 (both of which were coincidentally scored by Courage of Lassie<\/strong>\u2019s co-composer, Scott Bradley).<\/p>\n

\u201cNorthwest Hounded Police\u201d was directed by ex-Warner animator Tex Avery, and stars Droopy as Northwest Mounted Sergeant McPoodle. Armed with a jurisdictional multipass, Droopy tracks down an escaped pooch from Alka-Fizz Prison (\u201cNo Noose Is Good Noose\u201d). The pair run all over North America, with plenty of grand facial explosions, ludicrous hiding spots (inside <\/em>a lion\u2019s ass!), and a prison fog horn tuned to mimic notes for \u201cB.O.\u201d\u00a0 – the old Warner cartoon gag where characters would smell body odor, and make their declaration to audiences like a fog horn.<\/p>\n

\u201cSolid Serenade\u201d has Tom tying up dog Killer so he can serenade a hot catty mama with his double bass and the song “Is You Is or is You Ain’t My Baby” (actually sung by Buck Woods), until Jerry\u2019s inability to sleep from the racket starts another war. Solid matter frequently hits heads and other aspects of cat and dog anatomies, and directors Hanna and Barbera flaunt some risqu\u00e9 imagery when the female cat is briefly glimpsed on a balcony wall, with her naked ass on display before Tom\u2019s upper head covers it up.<\/p>\n

Originally released in 2004, this title is available separately or as part of the new TCM Lassie omnibus, which includes the first four films: Lassie Come Home<\/strong> (1943), Son of Lassie<\/strong> (1945), Courage of Lassie<\/strong> (1946), and Hills of Home<\/strong> (1948).<\/p>\n

Strangely, the last three Lassie films – The Sun Comes Up<\/strong> (1949), Challenge to Lassie<\/strong> (1950), and The Painted Hills<\/strong> (1951) – remain unavailable on DVD. Lassie\u2019s other adventures moved to radio (1947-1950), several TV series (notably 1954-1973), and a handful of film efforts to rekindle the franchise: The Magic of Lassie<\/strong> (1978), Lassie<\/strong> (1994), and Lassie<\/strong> (2005).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related links:<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Lassie Come Home<\/a><\/strong> (1943) \u2014 \u00a0Son of Lassie<\/a><\/strong> (1945) \u00a0\u2014\u00a0Hills of Home<\/a><\/strong> (1948) —\u00a0Painted Hills, The<\/a> <\/strong>(1951)\u00a0— War Dogs<\/a><\/strong> (1942)<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>—\u00a0Fan Site<\/a> — War Dogs info:\u00a01<\/a> \/\u00a02<\/a> —\u00a0\u00a0Soundtrack Album <\/a>— Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Buy from:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.com<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0TCM Greatest Classic Film Collection: Lassie (Lassie Come Home \/ Son of Lassie \/ Courage of Lassie \/ Hills of Home)<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/strong> –\u00a0Tcm Greatest Classic Films: Lassie<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.co.uk <\/strong>–\u00a0Tcm Greatest Classic Films: Lassie [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em><\/em><\/em>\/\u00a0C<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ C . Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Good Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: August 24, 2004 Genre: Family \/ Lassie \/ Drama \/ War Synopsis: Laddie the dog runs away from his master and becomes a war dog in 1943. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[368],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-H9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3216,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions\/3216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}