The Painted Hills

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The Painted Hills
Lassie the Painted Hills poster.jpg
Original theatrical poster
Directed by Harold F. Kress
Screenplay by True Boardman
Based onShep of the Painted Hills
1930 novel
by Alexander Hull
Produced by Kenneth Bennett
Chester M. Franklin
Starring Pal (credited as "Lassie")
Paul Kelly
Bruce Cowling
Gary Gray
Cinematography Alfred Gilks
Harold Lipstein
Edited byNewell P. Kimlin
Music by Daniele Amfitheatrof
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • April 26, 1951 (1951-04-26)
Running time
68 minutes [1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$667,000 [2]
Box office$1,085,000 [2]

The Painted Hills, also known as Lassie's Adventures in the Goldrush, is a 1951 drama western film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and directed by Harold F. Kress.

Contents

Adapted by True Boardman from Alexander Hull's novel Shep of the Painted Hills, the film stars Paul Kelly, Bruce Cowling, Ann Doran, and dog actor Pal (credited as "Lassie") in a story about a collie named Shep who seeks revenge after her master is murdered. Technical advisor Nipo T. Strongheart for Native American topics worked with the Miwok people for their role in the movie. [3]

The Painted Hills was the seventh, and final, MGM Lassie film released. [4]

Plot

A prospector named Jonathan Harvey (Paul Kelly), whose faithful companion is a rough collie and a descendant of Lassie named Shep, looks after the family of his late partner, Martha Blake (Ann Doran) and her son Tommy (Gary Gray). After years of digging in the hills of California (where the movie was shot), he finally strikes gold. However, before he can share it with the Blakes, his greedy partner Lin Taylor (Bruce Cowling) kills Jonathan and attempts to lay claim on the gold. He poisons Shep, who nearly dies, and nearly kills Tommy, but ultimately Shep recovers and leads Lin into the mountains, where he falls off a cliff to his death.

Cast

Music

In 2010, Film Score Monthly released the complete scores of the seven Lassie feature films released by MGM between 1943 and 1955 as well as Elmer Bernstein’s score for It's a Dog's Life (1955) in the CD collection Lassie Come Home: The Canine Cinema Collection, limited to 1000 copies. Due to the era when these scores were recorded, nearly half of the music masters have been lost so the scores had to be reconstructed and restored from the best available sources, mainly the Music and Effects tracks as well as monaural ¼″ tapes. [5]

The score for The Painted Hills was composed by Daniele Amfitheatrof.

Track listing for The Painted Hills (Disc 5)

  1. Main Title/He's a Millionaire - 2:43
  2. I Need Your Help/Christmas/Hairy Present/Shep's Longing - 4:36
  3. Back to Jonathan/Montage - 1:28
  4. Visitor/Pilot Pete - 1:43
  5. Holy Pete/Good Girl/Foul Play/Shep Follows Jonathan - 9:55
  6. Hat/He Won't Be Back - 3:08
  7. Poison/Indians Find Shep - 4:09
  8. Rescue - 2:04
  9. Incantation/Shep Lives/Shep Came Back - 3:37
  10. Tommy Finds the Grave/Taylor Pursues Tommy/Tommy Is Hurt/The Hole/Thy Heavenly Kingdom - 4:55
  11. Come Along, Son/The Chase—Revised/Freezing Up/Taylor Dies/Happy Ending & End Title - 8:59

Total Time: 47:37

Release

According to MGM records, the film earned $783,000 in the US and Canada and $302,000 elsewhere, leading to a loss of $122,000. [2]

Public domain status

Along with seven other MGM films released the first half of 1951, the copyright on The Painted Hills lapsed after MGM neglected to file the necessary renewal applications in 1979. As such, the film is now part of the public domain and has been released to VHS and DVD by a variety of companies. [6]

Mystery Science Theater 3000

The Painted Hills was featured on episode #510 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 . The episode, which also featured a short about hygiene, "Body Care and Grooming", premiered on Comedy Central on September 26, 1993. [7] According to series writer Mary Jo Pehl, the character Pilot Pete was one of the favorites in the writers' room, although that was because they misheard the name as "Pile on Pete." [8]

Paste writer Jim Vorel ranked the episode near the middle in his evaluation of MST3K's first twelve seasons, placing the episode at #101. [a] Vorel doesn't care for The Painted Hills, which he says "tends to get under my skin and irritate me"; he calls the movie a "humdrum, overly wholesome film" with "washed-out colors." Vorel says the short, which is "loaded with one side-splitting riff after another," is the highlight of the episode. [9]

The MST3K version of the film was included as part of the Mystery Science Theater 3000, Volume XXXI: The Turkey Day Collection DVD set, released by Shout! Factory on November 25, 2014. The other episodes in the four-disc set include Jungle Goddess (#203), The Screaming Skull (#912), and Squirm (#1012). [10]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Ranking based on 197 episodes as of 2018.

Citations

  1. ↑ imdb.com
  2. 1 2 3 The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
  3. ↑ Strongheart, Nipo T. (Autumn 1954). "History in Hollywood". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. 38 (1): 10–16, 41–46. JSTOR   4632754.
  4. ↑ Collins, Ace. Lassie: a Dog's Life. Penguin Books, 1993.
  5. ↑ "Lassie Come Home: The Canine Cinema Collection (1943-1955)". Film Score Monthly . Retrieved November 21, 2019.
  6. ↑ Pierce, David (June 2007). "Forgotten Faces: Why Some of Our Cinema Heritage Is Part of the Public Domain" . Film History: An International Journal. 19 (2): 125–43. doi:10.2979/FIL.2007.19.2.125. ISSN   0892-2160. OCLC   15122313. S2CID   191633078 . Retrieved 2008-02-21. MGM was never known for its mystery films, but there has been a mystery as to why the studio's copyrights on eight features from the 1950/51 season fell into the public domain...Technicolor films include Mr. Imperium, a musical with Lana Turner and Ezio Pinza, The Painted Hills, the studio's final Lassie picture, and Vengeance Valley with Burt Lancaster and Robert Walker in a Cain and Abel story...These are mostly 'A' pictures, they were all in-house productions, they weren't sold to another studio, they had valid copyright notices, they were all released from January to June 1951, and MGM did file copyright renewal applications for them.
  7. ↑ sampo (June 2, 2016). "Episode guide: 510- The Painted Hills (with short: 'Body Care & Grooming')". Satellite News. Retrieved November 13, 2025.
  8. ↑ Beaulieu, Trace; et al. (1996). The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide (1st ed.). New York: Bantam Books. p. 95. ISBN   9780553377835.
  9. ↑ Vorel, Jim (October 25, 2017). "Ranking Every MST3K Episode, From Worst to Best". Paste . Retrieved November 13, 2025.
  10. ↑ Salmons, Tim (November 26, 2014). "Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXXI – The Turkey Day Collection (DVD Review)". The Digital Bits. Retrieved November 13, 2025.
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