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Courage of Lassie More at IMDbPro »
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| Index | 16 reviews in total |
15 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Liz is again the overwrought, ecstatic child..., 4 June 2005
Author:
ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
In "Courage of Lassie," the dog gets top billing, but a pretty teenager
(Liz Taylor) has plenty of crying and hugging to do as a supremely
devoted mistress…
Another heart-warming story, filmed in the wilderness of Washington
State, the movie (which begins with a long, curious, wild-life
sequence) mixes farm-family folksiness with an unusual dog story:
Lassie goes to a training school for war dogs, is shipped to the front
and performs heroically… Returned to America, the dog suffers a nervous
collapse, becoming a menace to society…
As the willful farm girl who finds a dog, loses a dog, and regains a
dog, Liz Taylor is again the overwrought, ecstatic child, lavishing her
attention on Lassie…
Because her greatest fame came later, as a young woman, most people
forget what a skillful child actress she was… Less burdened than at any
later time by her beauty and fame, she is at her least self-conscious
in these early performances… Untouched, she reveals in these animal
stories her natural flair for tears and hugs—the paraphernalia of an
emotional female…
10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
many adventures with a young girl, 8 November 2005
Author:
rebeljenn from Bath, England
'Courage of Lassie' is not really about 'Lassie' but about a Lassie-like collie named Bill. 'Courage of Lassie' is one of the best Lassie films, in my opinion. The storyline is packed full of adventure in which Bill saves the day, but when Bill is hit by a truck and taken away from young Kathy (Elizabeth Taylor), Bill becomes an army dog in the second World War. (I think this is the only Lassie film to have a female girl as the dog's primary master.) There are also some happy parts of the movie, showing the deep friendship that the young girl and collie share. This, intertwined with Lassie saving sheep in a snow storm and becoming a war hero makes this a good film. It's not as good as 'Lassie Come Home', but it is still worth a watch if you enjoy films about dogs.
6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Virtuoso performance by an MGM superstar, 28 May 2007
Author:
keesha45 from United States
Not only did she play two different parts in this film (with three different names) but she had two deathbed scenes and played a war hero who turns into a crazed killer. Any actress in Hollywood would have killed for a chance to play that kind of character, which usually leads to an Oscar nomination. But this was no ordinary actress and she wasn't even a female or even a human. We're talking about Lassie, who was played by the greatest female impersonator in the history of the silver screen, otherwise known as Pal.The star of this vehicle not only got away with playing both a male and a female in this picture (a son and his mother) but he/she was such a mega star that the producers could call the film COURAGE OF LASSIE without the character Lassie even being in it.(You wouldn't find Johnny Weissmuller playing the Thin Man in a Tarzan movie, would you?)Be that as it may, Lassie (or should I say Pal?) plays Bill with such acting skill that there should have been an Oscar awarded for the performance. Of course, the Academy would have had the dilemma of not sure whether to give the statuette for the Best Actor or Best Actress. Toss in some cute animal scenes at the beginning and a tear-jerking ending, with some beautiful location footage at Lake Chelan in north central Washington in the middle, and you've got one of the most heartwarming animal movies of that era. You just wouldn't have wanted to tell the star that he/she was an animal. Thespians can be sensitive about that kind of thing. Dale Roloff
6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Dog dodges dozens of deadly darts, 23 March 2001
Author:
helpless_dancer from Broken Bow, Oklahoma
Well, folks, there were no surprises in this one. A young girl adopts a lost puppy and takes it in for her own, turning it into a first class sheep dog. Then the inseparable pair are separated and the dog must face a cruel world without his master. The film has the usual [and some unusual] assortment of adventures from the collie being shot, run over, drafted, shot again, ran to exhaustion, put on trial, exonerated, and then a tearful re-union with the little girl [the dog didn't shed a tear]. Some little girl. Wow! I liked it, but then, I am a hopeless dog lover: it was pretty corny, though. Nice Canadian scenery throughout, should be a winner with the kids.
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Adorable Film from the Past, 13 November 2007
Author:
whpratt1 from United States
This film starts off with a collie named Bill who breaks away from his family and encounters all kinds of friends in the woods which are bears, ravens, hawks and even travels on a pile of wood through all kinds of rapids that almost drown him. Bill no sooner takes a chance and relaxes in the grass when he is shot by hunters and Katie Merrick, (Elizabeth Taylor) comes to his rescue who had been following Bill because he ran off with her pants as she was swimming in the a lake. Kattie manages to tell the hunters not to kill Bill, because she is going to bring him to get help from a good friend of hers, Harry MacBain, (Frank Morgan) who manages to bring Bill back to health. There are many problems that face Katie with her collie dog and Bill is even recruited in the Army. Very nice film from the past. Enjoy.
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
WW II veteran Lassie suffers from PTSD, 11 July 2007
Author:
arm61 from United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
As the relative of someone who has suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) originating in his own experiences in the early part of WW II --- it is now some sixty-five years here in mid-2007 from those absurdly horrible and also unbelievable few months of his then-young life --- this is a terribly important film for me. Although Bill/Lassie is allegedly just some lost dog in the movie, what he experiences as a K-9 dog-soldier within the U.S Army's campaign to push the Imperial Japanese military out of its conquests in the Aleutian Islands in 1942 forever scars him. He comes home to the Elizabeth Taylor character in Washington state a haunted, and hurt animal and veteran. I relate very much to this story, and that is why I love this movie.
4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Lassie, WWII Psycho Vet, 23 February 2002
Author:
Richard Brandt from Colorado Springs
How can you not like a movie in which Lassie is inducted into the army and comes out warped into a serial killer? Like so many MGM stars during wartime Lassie found himself pressed into morale-building patriotic duty. When Frank Morgan tells Elizabeth Taylor he has a son in the Philippines, it's almost a foregone conclusion that Lassie (who goes by a variety of aliases here) will find his way to some kind of military heroism. The truly bizarre twist is that, pushed past the breaking point by his desperate Army masters to lead them to the rescue of a trapped patrol, he comes out with a grudge against the world, and winds up, essentially, on trial for murder. Ultimately, Morgan's courtroom summation turns this odd story into a surprisingly moving allegory for the situation of returning combat vets. (And I'd leap off a moving train, too, if I had little Liz Taylor waiting for me at home.)
5 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Two dogs, 4 July 2002
Author:
JoeytheBrit from www.moviemoviesite.com
Having recently watched the woeful AIR BUD 3: WORLD PUP, I've got to say
that the dog-movie genre has fallen a long, long way since the halcyon
days
when this movie was made.
The movie does starts off a little unpromisingly, though, resembling one
of
those old wildlife episodes of 'Wonderful World of Disney' as cute puppy
Lassie - otherwise known as Bill, for some reason - gambols playfully
around
beautiful Canadian locations, and enjoys lighthearted scrapes with
assorted
wildlife. Only when she is accidentally shot by a couple of young
hunters
and saved from mercy-killing by a young Elizabeth Taylor do things start
moving.
It is always a little disconcerting to see a young Taylor at work, and
be
presented with the indisputable fact that her range and skill as an
actress
improved not one iota throughout her acting career: she was a poor
actress
as a child, and just as woeful as an adult. Lassie steals every scene
they
share, even when she's doing nothing. The sickly-sweet sincerity and
relentless sentimentality are also pretty difficult to take during this
period of the film; only when Lassie is run over by a truck while
attempting
to escape Taylor's acting do things improve.
Drafted into the army, Lassie saves a surrounded unit at the cost of her
mental stability - a curiously effective performance here by Lassie as
she
flawlessly mimics mental and physical exhaustion - and then, by a series
of
unlikely circumstances, returns to her old stamping-ground as a mad-dog
chicken killer.
While COURAGE OF LASSIE is not quite up to the standard of the original
MGM
movies in the series, it is still a well-crafted, beautifully shot and
occasionally suspenseful flick that will please lovers of this genre and
offers an unusual insight into the plight of shell-shocked veterans
returning home after WWII.
2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Lassie as a shell-shocked war hero steals the show..., 21 September 2006
Author:
Neil Doyle from U.S.A.
This is a mildly entertaining Lassie film in which the collie (who is
named Bill in the story) plays the leading role while the human players
(ELIZABETH TAYLOR, FRANK MORGAN, TOM DRAKE) are mere foils. The plot
concerns a pretty teen-aged Taylor who finds him in the Canadian
wilderness, loses him when he goes astray, and finds him again in time
for a heart-warming conclusion, but only after war-weary dog has gone
on trial for, of all things, murder.
It starts out slowly as a nature film with nothing but shots of rabbits
and other woodland creatures before it gets to the heart of the story
with the opening scenes of Frank Morgan and Elizabeth Taylor (in her
early teens and seemingly unspoiled, giving one of her more natural
performances). Taylor's fawning over Lassie seems genuine, if a bit too
sentimental, and it's a relief at the finale that she is reunited with
her pet.
Standout are the war scenes where Lassie is forced to help American
soldiers in a dangerous assault on some Japanese soldiers. Lassie is
trained in these chores by soldier TOM DRAKE and after battle fatigue
sets in he becomes another shell-shocked victim of war. How he's able
to return to Taylor for the film's happy ending is the balance of the
story.
Nicely done, filmed in wilderness areas of Canada and the state of
Washington, but still just a minor entry in the Lassie stories.
2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Lovely Touching Lassie Story of Old, 4 April 2005
Author:
Scoval71 from New York, NY
This is a Lassie movie. It stars Lassie. Lassie's name is above the title. It is not an Elizabeth Taylor movie, although her presence is just as lovely, young and innocent. Lassie here is played by the very first and original Lassie collie---who was in most, not all, of the Lassie movies. There were nine Lassies. Today, April, 2005, we have the ninth Lassie, all descendants of this very first Lassie. Courage of Lassie is a sweet and very sad story at times with a plot and storyline particular to WWII and is is not unrealistic or spectacular. It is a family movie and a throwback to a time when Lassie movies were popular. It must be viewed in that light. I recommend it,as I would recommend all Lassie movies and I, personally, am looking forward to seeing the new Lassie movie currently being filmed.
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