Savage Sam

Savage Sam is a Walt Disney Productions adventure set on the Texas frontier, where brothers Travis and Arliss Coates and their neighbour Lisbeth Searcy are seized by Apache raiders while their parents are away. The boys' uncle, Beck Coates, organises a search, but the pursuit turns on the tracking skills of the family dog Sam, the son of Old Yeller, who follows the captors' trail across rough country.

Norman Tokar directed, working from a screenplay by Fred Gipson and William Tunberg. It was the third film in Tokar's run behind the camera, following Sammy, the Way-Out Seal and Big Red, and it preceded Those Calloways. Brian Keith plays Uncle Beck, with Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran as the brothers, Marta Kristen as Lisbeth, and Dewey Martin and Jeff York in supporting roles. The story continues the characters Gipson created in Old Yeller.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6 out of 10 from around 1,300 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 5.2 out of 10 from roughly 30 votes. The larger IMDb sample reflects a modest, enduring regard for the film among viewers familiar with Disney's frontier output of the period, while the smaller TMDB group rates it lower.