Sheepdog of the Hills

My Dad - Alfred Hall - always told us he was involved with making sheepdog films, but we had no idea that any of them were available to view. Anyway, there he was on-screen, he even had some action! I wish he was still here to see it too. A very old fashioned film with a bit of a dodgy story line, but take it with a pinch of salt and it was very funny in parts. I enjoyed it.

You can tell how long ago this film was made from the fact that saturnine postwar rogue David Farrar is playing a benign pipe-smoking clergyman in this rural soap opera with the usual busy score directed by Perceval Mackey, a kindly village bobby and an indulgent view of poachers; in which stiff dialogue scenes indoors alternate with attractive location work in a fashion reminiscent of the silent dramas cameraman Geoffrey Faithfull had been shooting for Hepworth twenty years earlier.

The other face familiar to older viewers is gruff Denis Wyndham - best remembered as a heavy in Will Hay's Gainsborough films - marching through the undergrowth with a shotgun over his arm and his loyal sheepdog by his side.