Too many fans seem to be blown away

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Fred M. Wilcox returned to direct Lassie in his third film, but this is not a continuation of "Son Of Lassie", though original costar Elizabeth Taylor does return as a new character called Kathie Merrick, who rescues a collie pup, and names it Bill(Lassie is not the name here, despite the title!) whom she raises as a sheep-herder, until one day he is hit by a truck and taken to a veterinarian. Bill's life is saved, but is not identified, so is instead sent off as a war dog to assist soldiers in the trenches. Sadly, this experience turns Bill vicious, and upon his return home becomes a livestock killer. Can Kathie convince the court not to put Bill down? Strange film is mostly an uninspired rehash of the first two(unrelated) pictures, when it would have been far wiser to just continue that story, instead of creating this one. A wasted opportunity.

As the relative of someone who has suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) originating in his own experiences in the early part of WW II --- it is now some sixty-five years here in mid-2007 from those absurdly horrible and also unbelievable few months of his then-young life --- this is a terribly important film for me. Although Bill/Lassie is allegedly just some lost dog in the movie, what he experiences as a K-9 dog-soldier within the U.S Army's campaign to push the Imperial Japanese military out of its conquests in the Aleutian Islands in 1942 forever scars him. He comes home to the Elizabeth Taylor character in Washington state a haunted, and hurt animal and veteran. I relate very much to this story, and that is why I love this movie.

This is a mildly entertaining Lassie film in which the collie (who is named Bill in the story) plays the leading role while the human players (ELIZABETH TAYLOR, FRANK MORGAN, TOM DRAKE) are mere foils. The plot concerns a pretty teen-aged Taylor who finds him in the Canadian wilderness, loses him when he goes astray, and finds him again in time for a heart-warming conclusion, but only after war-weary dog has gone on trial for, of all things, murder.It starts out slowly as a nature film with nothing but shots of rabbits and other woodland creatures before it gets to the heart of the story with the opening scenes of Frank Morgan and Elizabeth Taylor (in her early teens and seemingly unspoiled, giving one of her more natural performances). Taylor's fawning over Lassie seems genuine, if a bit too sentimental, and it's a relief at the finale that she is reunited with her pet.Standout are the war scenes where Lassie is forced to help American soldiers in a dangerous assault on some Japanese soldiers. Lassie is trained in these chores by soldier TOM DRAKE and after battle fatigue sets in he becomes another shell-shocked victim of war. How he's able to return to Taylor for the film's happy ending is the balance of the story.Nicely done, filmed in wilderness areas of Canada and the state of Washington, but still just a minor entry in the Lassie stories.

How can you not like a movie in which Lassie is inducted into the army and comes out warped into a serial killer? Like so many MGM stars during wartime Lassie found himself pressed into morale-building patriotic duty. When Frank Morgan tells Elizabeth Taylor he has a son in the Philippines, it's almost a foregone conclusion that Lassie (who goes by a variety of aliases here) will find his way to some kind of military heroism. The truly bizarre twist is that, pushed past the breaking point by his desperate Army masters to lead them to the rescue of a trapped patrol, he comes out with a grudge against the world, and winds up, essentially, on trial for murder. Ultimately, Morgan's courtroom summation turns this odd story into a surprisingly moving allegory for the situation of returning combat vets. (And I'd leap off a moving train, too, if I had little Liz Taylor waiting for me at home.)