By Richard Winters
My Rating: 8 out of 10
4-Word Review: Dog saves kidnapped children.
Benji (Higgins) is a stray dog who resides in an empty house that some consider haunted in the outskirts of a small town. He regularly visits Cindy (Cynthia Smith) and Paul (Allen Fiuzat) who are children who live in a big home with their father (Peter Breck) and housekeeper Mary (Patsy Garrett). The children want to keep the dog as their own, but the father refuses insisting that strays can carry diseases and therefore it wouldn’t be safe. One day three people (Deborah Walley, Christopher Connelly, Tom Lester) break into the abandoned home, but do not notice Benji, or his poodle companion Tiffany, who hide behind a table. The three, who are led by a fourth person named Mitch (Mark Slade), plot a kidnapping and to Benji’s shock it turns out to be the two children that are the victims. He tries to alert Mary and the father, but is unable to get them to understand until he comes up with a clever tactic to clue them in. Will he be able to get them and the police to catch-on soon enough before the kidnappers move the children out of the home and into an undisclosed location?
The film was a labor of love for writer/director/producer Joe Camp who worked in advertising before deciding to get into filmmaking. The inspiration came while he was watching Lady and the Tramp on TV and concluded that there weren’t enough quality children’s films out there and decided to attempt to change that. However, when he shopped his storyline around to the various studios it got roundly rejected, so he decided to use his background in marketing to make and distribute the film himself. It was made on a modest budget of $500,000 but ended up making $45 million.
Compared to other children’s films this is an improvement as both the children and adults are portrayed as being smart, realistic people. In other kiddie flicks it seems it always has to be one way or the other with the kids being the naive ones saying cutesy, silly things and the adults chuckling about it, or dispensing preachy ‘life lessons’, or its the kids that are in the know while the adults are out-of-touch, so it’s nice when both sides can be shown as sensible and even when there are disagreements it gets handled in a respectful manner. The soundtrack doesn’t have that cheesy, singsong saccharine quality like you usually hear in this type of genre, but is instead distinct, jazzy, and even toe-tapping.
It’s impressive how the film gets literally inside the head of the dog and you see everything, including the camera angles, from his point-of-view. Most other films with animals as characters don’t do that. Usually they get paired with a human friend/owner who helps ‘narrate’ what the animal is thinking, but here there’s none of that. I was thinking, but willing to forgive the moment when one of the kidnappers pulls out a gun and Benji reveals a frightened expression though animals really won’t know what a gun is, but director Camp smartly inserts a visual showing the dog encountering a gun in the past when police confront a robber and thus explaining why the dog would understand its danger, which other filmmakers wouldn’t have bothered to show, or even thought through.
I have only two criticisms. The first one is a relatively mild complaint dealing with the behavior of the bad guys, particularly Connelly and Lester’s characters who seem unrealistically spooked by the house even though two big, tough rugged guys who are streetwise enough to commit a bold kidnapping shouldn’t believe such childish things. When they broke into the house, they should’ve gone through the entire place including the upstairs to make sure no one else, including a possible vagrant, was residing there. Also, when the kids are kidnapped, the perpetrators should’ve worn masks, or blindfolded the kids, so as not to be identified later, which seems like something that should’ve been a no-brainer.
Spoiler Alert!
The biggest issue though is when Mitch kicks the little dog named Tiffany and it appears that he’s killed her. While it does show at the very end that she was only injured as the she hobbles out of the vet clinic wearing a cast on her tiny legs it is still very traumatic for a child to see such a violent act on a defenseless animal. I remember when I watched this movie at the age of 5 in the theaters, I cried all the way home afterwards. A few years later when we watched it again on Showtime with my younger brother and sister, they cried about it too. A scene like that, even if the dog is eventually shown as surviving, wasn’t necessary and the movie should’ve certainly been given a PG-rating as the G-rating is misleading.
My Rating: 7 out of 10
Released: October 17, 1974
Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes
Rated G
Director: Joe Camp
Studio: Mulberry Square Releasing
Available: DVD, Blu-ray
Scopophilia 