The Silent Call

Another movie that's been running on FXM Retro a bunch recently that's on again is The Silent Call. It's going to get yet another airing tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM.

The movie starts off with young Guy (Roger Mobley) trying to stuff his dog into the trunk of a car, removing luggage and hiding it! The poor dog; who would do a thing like that to a dog? As it turns out, Guy is doing it because he feels he doesn't have much choice. His father Joe (David McLean) gut a good job that's going to require moving the family from Elko, NV to Los Angeles. Apparently they couldn't afford a U-Haul, because they only have their little compact car and there's not nearly enough room in the car to bring the dog along with all the other stuff they need to bring.

It's not as if they're abandoning the dog, though. Dad just plans to leave it with a neighbor until the family can get settled in in Los Angeles and Dad can get enough money to have the dog shipped out to Los Angeles, which should take a month maximum. Not that the boy cares; he thinks Dad really doesn't like the dog. (Of course, all this is a quarter century before My Life as a Dog.) More worrisome is that the neighbor they're leaving the dog with really doesn't like the dog -- didn't the family have any other friends? Sure enough, as soon as the family sets out on the road, the dog breaks through the screen door and runs off behind the family, falling behind because cars are faster than dogs.

The dog proceeds to have a series of adventures, first with a couple of hobos, and then with an old guy who's all alone in a house now that everybody else has died, and he's going to die soon, too. Guy hates his father more and more, with mom Flore (Gail Russell, in her final film before dying of her alcoholism) trying to patch things up between father and son. But Guy insists on being over the top in hating Dad. And it's about to get worse when the family learns the dog escaped. Guy decides that once the dog gets to LA -- and he just knows that's going to happen -- he's going to run away with the dog.

The dog continues to have more adventures, somehow apparently knowing which way is the right direction to Los Angeles, all the while getting helped by some humans and threatened by others. Still he's going to keep searching for his family....

I found The Silent Call to be a laughable Saturday matinee movie from a time when the whole Saturday matinee thing was on the way out thanks to the rise of television. The plot strains credulity; the movie looks like it was done on a shoestring budget; and the score was definitely sub-par. The less said about the acting, the better. Young children might enjoy this movie; most other people will probably be happy it's over after 63 minutes.

Amazingly, The Silent Call is available on DVD courtesy of Fox's MOD scheme, when you consider all the better movies that aren't available.