Savage Sam

I put this in the DVD player primarily to see if Kevin Corcoran, who played younger brother Arliss in the classic Old Yeller, could possibly be as annoying as he was in that film. He could. The idea that this little self-centered, shithead monster, who chucks rocks at everything he doesn’t like and never obeys his parents or older brother Travis, could last as much as ten minutes out in the hardscrabble Texas hill country without his mother and father slapping him upside the head so hard his toes would rattle is simply unthinkable. No one was shy about hitting children back then, and I’m not talking about spanking. His behavior seriously puts the family in jeopardy multiple times, and he always gets off with a sigh, a chuckle, and a “Well, that’s just little Arliss!” My ass. He would have a bloody nose and two black eyes just about every day if he kept that up. He came damn near spoiling Old Yeller for me, and his presence is even worse here at age fourteen. It had me ejecting the disk after about thirty minutes. It would not have been a very good movie even without him, and with him, it stinks like a dead polecat.