The Rescuer – Feature film about animal rescue

Sometimes wonderful and unexpected things happen when you set out to make a documentary, and this is very much the case with The Rescuer, which began as a 27-year chronicle of the activities of Leo Grillo, a man who loves animals, perhaps too much.


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A note from Leo — In 2012 this documentary was entered in a number of film festivals where it won many awards. Rather than playing to small audiences and charging for admission, or selling DVDs, I want everyone to see it so we are letting you stream it here for FREE. This would be a wonderful classroom video for teachers to play, for nursing homes and hospitals, as well as being interesting to reality show audiences across the world.     ~Leo Grillo

ABOUT THE FILM:

In 1979, Grillo, an up-and-coming young Hollywood actor driving to a location shoot, spotted a bedraggled abandoned dog wandering under the broiling desert sun. Leo couldn’t resist stopping to pick up the animal and subsequently nursing it back to health.

This experience opened Leo’s eyes to a shocking problem: annually, millions of pets are tossed out and simply left to die in America’s wilderness. Almost before he realizes it, Leo has found and taken in 35 more abandoned dogs, saving them from certain death.

Leo formed a nonprofit organization called D.E.L.T.A. (Dedication and Everlasting Love to Animals), which eventually grows to include a 115-acre ‘supershelter’ housing over 1500 abandoned dogs and cats, the largest organization of its type in the world. A controversial figure, Leo Grillo in The Rescuer becomes obsessed with the tracking of one specific dog and her family over a 2 year period which changes his life in an unexpected way.

Delta Rescue resident Hercules and his story