My Dog Rusty (1948)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
The fifth film in the Columbia series has Huge Mitchell (John Litel) running for Mayor while at the same time trying to break his son Danny (Ted Donaldson) of lying. Soon Danny's lies get out and a bad rumor comes from it, which could cause his father's chance of being elected. MY DOG RUSTY no doubt wants to pass off a message to kids that lying doesn't pay but I think the other "lessons" it gives out are just as worse but more on that in a minute. There's no doubt that this was an ultra low-budget series but I found this entry to be pretty entertaining thanks in large part to a nice story that didn't have to resort to preaching to get its message across. With that said, I found it interesting that Danny is being blamed for everything bad that happens in the movie but at the same time it's doubtful these lies would be nearly as damaging to the election as the father's temper, which gets out of hand several times. I mean, he's constantly threatening his son but even worse is a fight he gets into with the current mayor and he even goes after another man in public. These "fights" would seem to be just as bad as the lying but whatever. Once again we get nice performances by Donaldson, Litel and Ann Doran as the mother. The supporting cast includes nice work from Mona Barrie as a town doctor, Whitford Kane as a blind man and Lewis L. Russell as the mayor. The funny thing is that Rusty really doesn't factor too much into the movie. Whereas the previous films had him being a key part, he's really useless here and adds very little. Still, fans of the series should find this entertaining and at 67-minutes it flies by.
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