Benji the Hunted

Canine film star Benji, who first hit the cinema screens in 1974, stars in this thrilling, heart string-tugging adventure. Abandoned in the wilderness after an accident while out fishing with his master (Frank Inn), he witnesses a cougar shot by a hunter, leaving her four cubs helpless. Overcoming his prejudice against felines, Benji adopts them and even saves them from a prowling wolf using his cunning before making sure they are all safe and he is reunited with his owner. Joe Camp’s film for Walt Disney is firmly in the company’s pet-film mould but Benji is cute, Euel and Betty Box’s score for what is, inevitably, a film largely without dialogue, doesn’t smother and the outstanding scenery makes watching an absolute pleasure., When show dog Benji gets lost in the wilderness, he stumbles upon four orphaned cougar kittens and makes it his mission to find them a home., Both Benji the dog and his trainer Frank Inn play themselves in Benji the Hunted. Accidentally separated from Inn early in the film, the loveable pooch is forced to fend for himself in the Pacific Northwest. He latches onto a litter of cougar cubs, protecting them from harm while he himself has been targetted for a quick demise by a voracious black timber wolf. Filmed in Oregon and Washington, Benji the Hunted is more of the same from writer/director Joe Camp, the man who brought you all those earlier Benji epics. Camp’s tendency to direct his doggie star with more confidence than his human actors is very pronounced here; in fact, the film would have benefitted immensely by a complete lack of human characters., Separated from his trainer after a fishing accident, Benji the dog swims ashore to find himself in the wilds. Far from perishing, the plucky canine assumes a new role as the protector of a pack of orphaned cougar cubs – enduring the dangers of the terrain until he can once again reach civilisation., The canine swims to shore after an accident at sea and befriends four orphaned cougar pups. Trainer Frank Inn appears as himself. Hunter: Red Steagall. Newscaster: Nancy Francis. Directed by Joe Camp.