Deadly Dogs Week: Cujo (1983)

You didn't think I'd leave out the mother of all killer dog movies, did you? Of course not! It's a simple but well told story and came from the brilliant mind of my God, Stephen King (although even he admits that he was high as a fucking kite at the time and doesn't remember writing the book). Over 20 years since its release, Cujo still packs a pretty good punch.

Hopefully you don't need much of a synopsis for this one but it's become part of the format for my posts so here's a very short one: Donna and her young son Tad become stranded in their broken down Pinto by a rabid Saint Bernard. My review here is going to be less about the movie as a whole but rather some specific elements of it that I've always thought were intriguing.

Watching the movie again, there is a long setup until we get to the Camber house and all hell breaks loose with Cujo and poor Donna and Tad in the middle of it. This setup is necessary though to make the situation seem realistic and believable. We have to know that Joe Camber was planning to go out of town and stopped his mail. We have to know about Charity wanting to get her and her son away from Joe for a while so that no one knew something was wrong with Cujo until it was too late. We have to know about Vic's also going out of town and Donna's extramarital affair so that Vic thinks there's another possible reason for Donna's absence when he comes back home.

As the book mentions several times, there are a lot of factors that come into play that make this unique situation possible. Otherwise, you'd have people saying "Well why didn't they do this..." all through the movie. So the prolonged setup here in the movie is important both story-wise and in building suspense. But then I guess the biggest question of all is why didn't Donna call Joe Camber to make sure he'd be at his house before she took that piece of car way out there in the first place???

I actually love the earlier scenes where Cujo is just beginning to feel his sickness and you can tell that it is really hurting him. The little movements that they got the dog to do totally portrayed the progression of the rabies infection. Hopefully it also makes you feel a little sorry for Cujo, as well, because he is very much the victim of the story along with being the villain.

A word about Danny Pintauro as Tad Trenton. This kid absolutely KILLS in this movie. When I see a child acting as real and amazing as little Danny does in Cujo, I'm of the mind that maybe kids make better actors than adults overall. When he's all gaunt and pale-looking and crouched in the back of the Pinto screaming his head off while Cujo attacks his mother? Forget about it. It is his acting that sells most of the scenes in the car and he is perhaps the catalyst for Donna's actions. She might have given up or done something stupid a lot sooner if she didn't have her son to think about. Plus, his being brought back from the brink of death sort of becomes the redemptive factor for Donna and Vic's relationship.

Oh, the poor Pinto. Often known for being pretty much the worst car ever made, it is also gloriously immortalized as Donna and Tad's other captor in Cujo. The car is the reason they become stranded and does absolutely nothing to alleviate their situation, as it becomes an oven baking them in the heat and increasingly smaller and more uncomfortable. There is a great 360 degree dizzying shot of the inside of the Pinto after Donna has first been attacked by Cujo. The camera turns from Donna to Tad screaming and then back to Donna and then back to Tad, spinning faster and faster until the shot is a blur. 

I've always had mixed feelings about Stephen King's choice of a Saint Bernard for the rabid dog in Cujo. On the one hand, it's a good choice because even though giving any kind of dog rabies will make them a believable foe, Saint Bernards are very large and strong. On the other hand, Saint Bernards are also known for being a relatively gentle and loyal breed, and people often say they are the best dogs for families because they are so good with children. So it kinda sucks that they're given such a bad rap in this movie. Oh well, I guess Beethoven makes up for the damage done in Cujo.

So despite any of the usual problems with older movies - aging and whatnot - I think Cujo is one that can still affect people on the visceral level and continue to wear the hat of the first and probably the best of movies that make the family pet our worst nightmare.

Alright, this concludes Deadly Dogs Week! There was another movie I wanted to do for this called Play Dead but Netflix said it was going to be a "very long wait." 

Deadly Dogs Week: Rottweiler (2004)

So I never said that the movies involved in Deadly Dogs Week were going to be good. We're mid-week here and Rottweiler is so far the biggest turd I've ever seen. I'm just speechless about the suckiness of this movie that I don't even know if I can write a review. But I'll give it a shot.

In what is supposed to be a futuristic Spain, a man named Dante escapes from illegal immigrant lockup to go in search of his girlfriend Ula. Dante's trip is made more challenging by the vicious half-robotic Rottweiler dog chasing him through the country, attacking and maiming whomever stands in his way.

Doesn't sound all that bad, right? Killer robot dog? Yeah, that's what I thought too. But somebody went off in a complete wrong direction with that premise and produced a movie that is slow, boring, nonsensical, badly acted, and utterly retarded in almost every way. I'll give it .5 points for the shooting of some pretty nice-looking locations - then I'll take that half point away for claiming that this movie takes place in the future and never once shows us anything futuristic looking. An isolated house where people still hang their clothes outside to dry? A seedy red light district? Dang, I can't wait for the future!

The movie isn't even really about the Rottweiler chasing Dante. It's more of a side plot and one that is not even remotely as exciting as it should be. Take that dog out of the equation and replace it with plain old cops or something and all you have is a drama movie about a dude on the run, trying to find his long lost love. L-A-M-E. Oh! And for some reason that is never explained, Dante can't seem to remember the details of just what happened when he "lost" or "left" Ula somewhere. No idea. Can't remember. It happened like a year ago and this is supposedly the love of his life but he can't remember a big event such as (sorry to spoil the ending here - wait, no I'm not because none of you are going to watch this POS are you?) his girlfriend being raped by some sleazy guy and then killed by his dog? Don't believe it.

Actually, going back to the problem of the badly represented "futuristic" Spain, the Rottweiler is the only indication of future technology or whatever. Again, no explanation is given as to how the Rottweiler got that way (jeebus, could they at least have given the dog a name so I don't have to keep calling him Rottweiler?) seeing as how he was just a normal dog in the flashback where he killed Ula. Apparently after Dante beat the shit out of the dog, his owner called got all pissed and made him a robot! Yeah, that explanation works. Sure.

Thought the Rottweiler eats and/or attacks a lot of people throughout the course of the movie, even those parts are not good enough to save Rottweiler. The dog was trained well and gives a nice ferocious performance but his attack scenes are lackluster. Nothing all that inventive, just growling and screaming and blood and innards and close ups of the dog eating a fake human body. Ho-hum. The gore work is okay but there's nothing new or suspenseful in any of the death scenes.

So what I'm trying to say here is that I'm pretty pissed off that somebody would make a movie called Rottweiler, have it star a half-robotic killer dog and then give me 90 minutes of an annoying dude with a bad haircut and no memory wandering around from place to place, meeting more strange and annoying people and getting them killed. THAT SUCKS. Again, why would you even include a Rottweiler chasing this guy when it could have easily just been some corrupt prison official making Dante's life hell? It just makes no sense with the core story.

Okay, now I feel a little bad. I usually try to include something positive about every movie I see, just 'cause I'm a nice person. So I'll give it a point for the ending showdown between Dante and the Rottweiler, which has now been burned up and all that remains is a metal skeleton. That was fairly cool and the graphics were well done.

This movie, however, will NOT get points for any of the following: the awkward dialogue; Dante running around naked for 10 minutes; the more-than-awkward sex scene between Dante and a woman he has known for less than 10 minutes; the close up shot of a chicken screaming before it is attacked by the Rottweiler; or the random appearance of several scorpions throughout the film, as if they were symbolic or some shit.

Rottweiler really could have been so much cooler than it turned out to be. But with a script that doesn't seem to know where it's going or how it got there in the first place, all we have is a mess of a movie that just so happens to have a killer robot dog in it. Nothing else makes sense or is even the least bit enjoyable to watch in any way.

Deadly Dogs Week: Man's Best Friend (1993)

Okay. Man's Best Friend was SO not the movie I was expecting. But I have a tendency to expect either very much or very little about the random movies I watch and I wasn't even sure which of those categories Man's Best Friend was in. And surprise, surprise! What a fun movie. A little on the hokey side and a lot ridiculous at some points but still a good time.

Trying to get an exposé story on facility doing experiments on animals, Lori Tanner (Ally Sheedy) and her videographer sneak into the place to get footage. When they get caught and make a break for it, one of the experimental animals, a dog named Max, escapes with them and Lori takes him home. While Lori thinks he's the best pet ever, everyone else sees him for the danger he really is. Meanwhile, the dog's creator Dr. Jarret tries to get him back before the drugs he gave him wear off and Max turns into a killing machine.

Sometimes I have a problem with movies that use the old "genetic experimentation" stand-by to explain why some of these animals or people are going all crazy in these movies. It seems like too much of a cop-out or that the filmmakers didn't have a better reasoning for someone or something's psychosis. However... this genetics shit in Man's Best Friend was absolutely fantastic, if only because it brought about some of the funniest scenes in the movie. Some of the funniest stuff I've seen in a long time.

You see, Dr. Jarret (played by the wonderful Lance Henriksen) didn't just mess with Max's DNA - he created his monster by splicing the DNA of other animals like jaguars, owls, snakes, and lizards to give Max all of these animals' most useful abilities. So then we get some amazing scenes of just what little Max can do.

Let's go over some of this awesome stuff. 1) Max seems to have the strength of a bear as he busts through doors and windows and rips himself away from the chain that crazy animal abuser junkyard guy put on him.
2) He has the agility to leap over two cars to avoid being run over by police.
3) He can climb trees like a big kitty cat in order to go after a little kitty cat which....
4)... he is then able to swallow whole like a snake! This was the greatest few seconds of movie time ever. Hilarious and amazing.
5) Max has acid pee! I have no idea what animal that is supposed to come from but it's pretty freaking great when Max pees all over Lori's boyfriend's face and burns him.

Max is also a ladies dog. I couldn't believe I was watching this as it was unfolding but again, it was hilarious like most of the shit that happens in this movie. Max breaks into a neighbor's house to have sex with the cute collie dog who lives there. Some people may see it as a "dog rape" scene but I don't know about that... The collie was acting all coy and shy when Max showed up and where did he find her? ON THE BED. Yup, she knew what was gonna happen.

I expected a more glorious death scene for Max. He gets a cute little moment of sympathy with Lori right before Jarret storms into the room, shotgun in tow, and blows Max away with one shot as he's leaping at Jarret. Jarret then gets it too when he falls through a glass window onto a metal which THEN electrocutes him when the little dog Spike messes with an electrical plug. Whew. But I kinda feel sorry for Max. He might actually have been a good dog if he could have kept up with his meds that stopped him from, well... killing people.

Man's Best Friend is a surprising little horror/thriller/comedy that is not really great by any standards. The technical specs are okay, even some of the mechanical dog work is believable to somebody not really paying attention. But I liked it! Those scenes listed above had me laughing out loud and that is cool in my book. So give this one a chance if you have the time.

Deadly Dogs Week: The Breed (2006)

I think I liked The Breed a lot more than I should have. But it's one of those movies in the in-between - it's not really bad and it's not really good at the same time.

Two brothers, Matt and John, take their friends Nicki, Sara, and Noah to a late uncle's cottage on a remote island for a weekend of drinking and fun. They think they're the only ones there until one evening when a vicious dog attacks one of them and the rest of the pack soon shows up. Now stranded in the cottage, the group must find a way off the island with a horde of vicious German Shepherds wanting to eat them.

Okay, so the plot sounds stupid. There are plenty of animals out there scary enough to be the villain of an Animals Run Amok horror movie - sharks, snakes, spiders, alligators - but dogs are pets. Most of us have or have had one and we love them like our own children. Take a dog like a German Shepherd or a Rottweiler, however, and you have the potential for a pretty nasty beast. They're large and muscular with sharp, sharp teeth, so yeah they can be scary. Multiply one deadly dog by twenty and I can sort of believe it as a serious situation for our characters.

The explanation given for the dogs' viciousness is conveniently vague. The brothers recall over the course of the movie that on the other side of the island there was once a compound holding dogs for the purposes of training them, but it was shutdown after an outbreak of rabies. But these dogs on the island don't have rabies. Instead, at that same compound the people who ran the place were apparently doing genetic experiments on the dogs. It wasn't fully explained but I'm guessing that the experiments made the dogs more aggressive and homicidal.

What keeps this movie from utter ridiculousness is the acting and the serious tone of the movie. Oliver Hudson, Michelle Rodriguez and Taryn Manning all play their roles surprisingly well. There is no bad overacting (well, except by the couple at the beginning, that chick was annoying). They are just five normal twenty-somethings having a good time and their world is shattered. They all handle the situation as smartly as is expected and do what they can and what they have to in order to survive.

Oliver Hudson as the bad boy brother John is cliched but not distracting. Manning and Rodriguez are the real talents here and I like them both as actresses (Manning's voice is FANTASTIC) so they're okay with me in The Breed. The only one who brings the film down is Eric Lively as the other brother Matt and he is frankly as dull as dishwater in his role.

The Breed is not without its faults, though. The basic plot points are uninspired; there is absolutely no suspense or scare moments; and overall there is really nothing about this movie to go crazy over. Wes Craven was producer on this but I hardly see any of his influence if there was any. There are not many deaths and those that we see are not that gory or exciting. An impaling on a makeshift merry-go-round is the only good death but its not much to look forward to.

The movie also fails in that it often breaks the own rules that it sets up for the situation. The dogs are supposedly surrounding the cabin so the kids can't go out. Then there are several times where they are seen walking around outside to do things or get things with no fear of the dogs being around. Then, after Nicki is impaled through the calf with an arrow by Bad Shot John (major OW, by the way - I hate calf injuries), she later forgets that she's supposed to be in pain and limping and is able to climb on rafters and run from the dogs with no showing of her injury.

The Breed is not a movie that you absolutely must see right now but I don't think it can really be condemned as much as others think. It passes the time and it's not a bad movie to kick off my feature this week! Stay tuned for more movies with Deadly Dogs!