Savage Sam ** (1963, Brian Keith, Tommy Kirk, Kevin Corcoran) – Classic Movie Review 11,782

Savage Sam, the 1963 sequel to Old Yeller, again stars both Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran.

Director Norman Tokar’s 1963 Walt Disney American Western live-action film Savage Sam is the sequel to Old Yeller (1957), and based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Fred Gipson, and stars Brian Keith, Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran.

It is boy’s best friend stuff from Disney, about Old Yeller’s son Sam, the unpopular doggie pet of homesteader Uncle Beck Coates (Keith)’s 18-year-old nephew Travis Coates (Kirk) on the family farm in Southwest Texas. When Travis joins Bud Searcy (Jeff York)’s 17-year-old daughter Lisbeth (Marta Kristen) in a search for his precocious 12-year-old brother, Arliss (Kevin Corcoran), all three of them are captured by a band of renegade Apaches. The pooch gains the family’s love by sniffing out the kids abducted by the Indians.

This action-packed follow-up to Old Yeller is a fair example of the junior Western, though the photography by Edward Colman and settings are better than the script by Fred Gipson and William Tunberg, which lacks warmth and an acceptable attitude to Native Americans.

Disney bought the film rights to Gipson’s novel in September 1961 before publication in February 1962 and hired Gipson to write the screenplay but he was an alcoholic often incapacitated by rages. Disney hired Tokar from TV. ‘I like young talent,’ Disney said. ‘When people get to be institutions, they direct pictures with their left hand and do something else with their right.’

Filming started on 6 August 1962 and it was shot mostly around the San Fernando Valley. It was released by Walt Disney Productions on 1 June 1963, but it was not as successful as the original.

The cast are Brian Keith as Uncle Beck Coates, Tommy Kirk as Travis Coates, Kevin Corcoran as Arliss Coates, Dewey Martin as Lester White, Jeff York as Bud Searcy, Marta Kristen as Lisbeth Searcy, Rafael Campos as Young Warrior, Slim Pickens as Willy Crup, Rodolfo Acosta as Bandy Legs, Pat Hogan as Broken Nose, Dean Fredericks as Comanche Chief, Brad Weston as Ben Todd.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,782

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Tommy Kirk.