An Entertaining Summer Movie Menagerie

Video

Shiloh. Warner Family Entertainment. 93 minutes. $19.98. If you missed the very brief feature run of this quality boy-and-his-dog family film, you may want to catch it now on video. Based on Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Newbury Award-winning book, the touching film stars Blake Heron as Marty, a boy with a strong sense of right and wrong, who passionately struggles against adult opposition to rescue a young beagle from his abusive hunter owner. Heron does a good job, and he’s in sterling company: Scott Wilson plays the hunter, Michael Moriarty is Marty’s stern dad and Rod Steiger is the kindly town doc who affirms Marty’s courageous fight as “the greatest test of love.”

The Little Horse That Could--The Connemara Stallion: Erin Go Bragh. Dreams Come True Productions. 60 minutes. $12.95 plus $3.95 shipping. (800) 297-8787. Horse lovers will be attracted to this beautifully filmed, real-life profile of an irresistible, big-hearted little equine competitor. Narrated from the horse’s point of view, it shows the glossy, confident Erin Go Bragh rolling luxuriously in the pasture, getting new shoes, having his teeth filed and his mane French-braided and running and jumping like the champ-in-the-making that he is. Throughout, the film celebrates the special relationship between the little horse and professional rider-trainer Carol Kozlowski, who prepares him for the triathlon of horse sports: dressage, cross-country and show jumping.

Gulliver’s Travels, The Collector’s Edition. Just for Kids Home Video. $19.99. 96 minutes. (818) 595-0666. Yes, this 1939 musical cartoon feature from the Max Fleischer studios owed a lot to Disney’s 1937 “Snow White.” And no, the creators of the wildly wacky “Betty Boop” cartoons didn’t score a box-office success with this version of the Jonathan Swift classic. But there’s much charm in this fluidly animated tale about Gulliver and the Lilliputians, and comic and memorable moments, too. This “collector’s edition” boasts a digitally enhanced picture, a soundtrack digitally remastered in Surround Stereo, the film’s original theatrical trailer, a song booklet and two Max Fleischer cartoons--a ‘30s-era “Betty Boop” and a 1954 “Popeye.”