Rating: G
Genre:
Children's/Family
Release Date: 08/24/2004
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: English/French
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 89 Minutes
Flags: Child Classic
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
Female dogs tend to shed while in heat; this is why all the collies who've played doggy heroine
Lassie in the movies have actually been well-disguised males. A magnificent animal named
Pal was the screen's first
Lassie in 1943's
Lassie Come Home. Set in Yorkshire during the first World War, the film gets under way when the poverty-stricken parents (
Donald Crisp,
Elsa Lanchester) of young
Joe Carraclough (
Roddy McDowall) are forced to sell his beloved
Lassie. While her new master, the
duke of Rudling (
Nigel Bruce), is pleasant enough,
Lassie prefers the company of
Joe and repeatedly escapes. Even when cared for by the duke's affectionate granddaughter,
Priscilla (
Elizabeth Taylor),
Lassie insists upon heading back to her original home. This time, however, the trip is much longer, and
Lassie must depend upon the kindness of strangers, notably farmers
Dally (
Dame May Whitty) and
Dan'l Fadden (
Ben Webster) and handyman
Rowlie (
Edmund Gwenn). Based on the novel by
Eric Knight (originally serialized in
The Saturday Evening Post),
Lassie Come Home was released quite some time after
Knight's death. Like all the
Lassie sequels turned out by
MGM between 1943 and 1951,
Lassie Come Home was lensed in Technicolor.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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