NFR Project: “Old Yeller”
Dir: Robert Stevenson
Scr: Fred Gipson, William Tunberg
Pho: Charles P. Boyle
Ed: Stanley E. Johnson
Premiere: Dec. 25, 1957
84 min.
OK. You know how I hate Disney. Few films were more instrumental than this was in terrorizing my childish imagination, scarring me for life. It was the patented Disney pathos.
I don’t care how compelling young Tommy Kirk is. How beloved that danged old hound became. At the end, the kid has to shoot him. Nay, he CHOOSES to shoot him. Never mind that the once friendly Yeller is now a snarling monster, which only ups the emotional ante; the fact that the kid had to pull the trigger was more traumatic than the actual death of the dog.
And then he gets another dog. That’s life. The End. How . . . Brechtian.
The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: On the Bowery.
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