Git!

Orright, how can I be the only person who has seen this film and can comment on it? Am I doomed to be 'the guy from Australia' who seems to be the only one who actually saw all these really obscure movies?... at the cinema? Well, here is the sad truth: I saw this on a double feature in about 1968 during the school holidays when it ran for a week as a big double feature at Sydney's glorious mangy 2500 seat crumbling plaster palace, The Capitol.... the usual home of AIP drive in doubles ("now showing at The Capitol and these 11 drive ins" the ad usually went...) however this time GIT! ( can you believe this...) ran with another outdoorsy film THE CAT. Yep, one big week: GIT ! + THE CAT.... I am not sure if there were children right across Sydney pestering their parents moaning "But I wanna see GIT ! plus THE CAT...." but I do know there were a lot of us there that afternoon... and not just the usual hobos drinking metho. I see both films were made and directed by the same person: Ellis Kadison... and since I now recall that it all seemed like one big long identical film half with a slobbering dog and half with a big cat, no wonder. Yes in both films boy runs away and befriends wild animal. Rural Americana for families... like those Andy Griffith movies like ANGEL IN MY POCKET or the bear movie NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY with Clint Walker. Well, we got em all and I of course paid money to see them. Yippee!

It did not help the the copy of this movie that ran on TCM last night seemed to be in poor condition. That made it harder to judge the movie, but it turned out to be a would-be Disneyesque story about Jack Chaplain training a hunting dog for Richard Webb, while getting on with his daughter, Sandra-Dee-style Heather North. Besides extensive voice-over work explaining dog training, Chaplain sings a couple of songs. He's a better singer than an actor, but at least part of the problem lies in a dully written script.

It seemed to be a career-ender for some of the talent involved. It was the last theatrical movie of cinematographer Gordon Avil, whose first was King Vidor's HALLELJUAH; and Joseph Hamilton never appeared in another show on the big or little screen.

As one other reviewer noted, the copy that was shown on TCM Dec 5th was in poor condition. Almost everything had a green tinged hue, there were visible green stripes on either side of the film and there were also occasional ripples in the film as well. That aside, this is one sucky film. The acting by everyone was extremely wooden, the dialogue clunky, the plot juvenile and Chaplain did not look the part (17 years old). The best part of the movie was Heather North exiting the swimming pool. All in all, only worth watching if you have absolutely nothing else to do and even then, you might be able to find a better use of your time.