We've skipped a few years since the last ones - Robert Bray's looking older and fatter. (In fact alcohol was getting the better of him.) These are again 30 minute continuing episodes stitched together for extra cinema bucks - though I'm not convinced that there would have been great audiences for these in 1967.
Flight of the Cougar is ostensibly about testing meteorological equipment at height using a glider, piloted by cute - but goes nowhere - Merry Anders. But then - and you have to be there to believe it - Lassie helps a cougar who has been shot, by taking its new cubs to the protection of a cave, then feeding it stolen steaks. He (or she) also fights off a vicious wild dog and tames a wild horse. And rescues the fallen glider lady. Phew!
The homely worlds of Lassie and the new 'groovy' generation uncomfortably collide in the second film. Corey attempts to get two kids to trade their land in a new conservation scheme - I'm with them - why should they? After saving Lassie from the old disused mine saga, they are all friends, though have linguistic banterings. Then the boys save their girl friend from drowning, but she's in trouble with daddy for staying over all night. Good job she gets pneumonia so they can't bang her! Lassie would have protected her anyway.
This says it all:
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| Honestly - the older one's at college, too |
The dog we're seeing here is Mire - Baby tragically died of cancer aged only seven, in 1966. But Lassie IV is just as brilliant as his forebears - the moment Corey catches him with a purloined steak in his mouth and that look of guilt in the dog's eyes is classic.
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