Rocky
Cast & Crew
Phil Karlson
Roddy Mcdowall
Gale Sherwood
Nita Hunter
Edgar Barrier
Jonathan Hale
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
While fishing, Scottish-American house painter John Hammond and his teenaged son Chris encounter Bert Hillman, a ranch foreman hunting for a wild dog that killed one of his sheep. When Hillman and his ranch hand find the dog, they kill it and one of its puppies. Seeing that one of the dog's puppies was left untouched, Chris and his father adopt it and name it Rocky. Though John believes that dogs born to sheep-killers will become sheep-killers, he gives his son a chance to raise the dog and prove otherwise. Chris spends his days training Rocky until the dog is full-grown and domesticated. One day, Rocky accidentally knocks clothes belonging to Chris' neighbor, Kathy Forrester, into a lake. When Kathy finds Chris holding her wet clothes, she thinks he stole them as a prank and pushes him into the water. Kathy eventually realizes that it was the dog who was responsible and apologizes to Chris. Kathy falls in love with Chris and invites him to dinner, but Ellen, her older sister, soon vies for his attention. Ellen becomes especially enamored of Chris when Kathy tells her that his father is a painter. Kathy, however, does nothing to correct Ellen's assumption that Chris's father is an artist. When Chris arrives at the Forresters', he is overwhelmed by Ellen's beauty as she descends the staircase in an alluring dress. Ellen and her father, who are both interested in art, are impressed with Chris's "artist" father, but Chris believes they are making fun of him and leaves. Humiliated, Chris asks his father to take him back to their ancestral home in Edinburgh, Scotland. Meanwhile, local ranchers, suspecting that Rocky is responsible for a recent rash of sheep killings, begin to organize a search for him. Chris overhears Hillman tell John about the ranchers' concerns, and worries that Rocky will fall victim to their vengeance. Kathy later apologizes to Chris in a letter, and the two meet at the lake, where Chris tells her, on an oath of secrecy, that Rocky's mother was a sheep killer. When Ellen steals Chris away from Kathy as her date for an upcoming picnic, Kathy sends an urgent telegram to Ellen's former sweetheart, Jack Arnold, who lives in Arizona, instructing him to return to Ellen at once. Kathy's plan succeeds, and she ends up taking Chris to the picnic. During the picnic, Rocky attacks the dog responsible for the sheep killings, and returns to Chris covered with blood. Chris sadly concludes that the blood is evidence that Rocky is the sheep killer, and decides to turn him over to Hillman. Things look bad for Rocky until the real sheep-killer, a dog that resembles him and that came from the same litter, is found. Hillman apologizes to Chris for mistaking his dog for the killer, and Rocky returns to the arms of his loving owner.
Director
Phil Karlson
Cast
Roddy Mcdowall
Gale Sherwood
Nita Hunter
Edgar Barrier
Jonathan Hale
Irving Bacon
William Ruhl
Claire Whitney
John Alvin
Rags, A Dog
Crew
Wesley Barry
George Booker
W. Scott Darling
Jack Dewitt
Ace Herman
Edward J. Kay
Tom Lambert
Lorraine Maclean
John Martin
Roddy Mcdowall
Ray Mercer
Dave Milton
Talmadge Morrison
Lindsley Parsons
Harry Ross
Tim Ryan
George Wallace Sayre
William Sickner
Ilona Vas
Robert Warwick Jr.
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Exteriors were shot at Bridgeport (CA.) The Hollywood Reporter review noted that this was the "first film on which Roddy McDowall is credited with a co-associate producer chore."
