Movies That Suck: Dogs (1977)

I love me a good killer animal flick, whether it be immortal classics like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and Jaws, B-movie favorites like Alligator (and its sequel, which most hate but I have some nostalgia for) and Anaconda, or campy cheese-fests like Frogs. So, when I just happened upon the Scorpion Blu-Ray of this film, which I'd never heard of before, at the Hastings that used to be in Tullahoma, in 2016, I figured I'd give it a shot, especially given the memorable cover, which you see here and is a modification of the original theatrical poster. While I knew it wouldn't be a truly great movie of this type like Cujo, I hoped it would, at the very least, be as entertaining as Man's Best Friend (another movie I have nostalgia for). However, while Man's Best Friend is definitely not a classic, when compared to Dogs, it sure feels like one. I've seen truly bad examples of this subgenre in my time, like Piranha II: The Spawning, Tentacles, and Orca, as well as those awful made-for-Sci-Fi Channel Anaconda sequels, the Python movies, and the like, and Dogs fits right in with that dubious lot. A bunch of dogs suddenly turning vicious and terrorizing a California college community sounds like a fun time, but this flick, despite some instances of interesting and even beautiful cinematography, bits of spookiness, the gory aftermaths of the attacks, and not half-bad score, is a drag. It's pitifully slow and dull, with not as much energy or threatening vibes to the attack scenes as you would hope for, and a cast of characters whom you're not likely to give a crap about, even if you're a fan of the late David McCallum. And though the movie plays it all perfectly straight, only hinting at a possible cause for the dog attacks and leaving everything open-ended, it's impossible to take seriously, and shoots itself in the foot at the very end, with its sorry attempt to leave off with a sense of ongoing terror.

During a dinner party for the faculty of Southwestern University, located in a remote town in California, Harlan Thompson, the beer-chugging, introverted head of the biology department, is informed by local sheriff Jimmy Goodman of the latest in a series of cattle deaths at a nearby ranch. Goodman drives Thompson out to the spot and, upon examining the cow's mutilated corpse, he notes that the bite marks are of varying sizes. When examining it in broad daylight the next day, he sees that the animal was simply killed rather than fed upon. Meanwhile, a new biology professor, Michael Fitzgerald, begins incorporating a new theory of his, that pheromones can drive various animals within the species to act as a single-minded group, into his class. Determined to save his cattle, rancher Larry Ludecky stakes out in the field that night, armed with a rifle, when he's attacked and mauled to death by a pack of domestic dogs that have turned vicious. After learning about it, Thompson examines Ludecky's corpse down in the morgue; at the same time, a student is attacked and killed by dogs, along with an elderly lady who tries to help, only for her own dog to turn on her. Talking with Fitzgerald about it, Thompson considers that it might have something to do with his pheromone theory. He then learns of the more recent attacks and theorizes that domestic dogs may now be attacking people in large packs. Realizing how dangerous this potentially ongoing situation is, Thompson and Fitzgerald talk with the university's president, Martin Koppelman. However, Koppelman dismisses their fears, only for a local kindergarten dog show to go horribly awry when the dogs suddenly attack. Though no one is killed or seriously injured, the townspeople become aware of the other attacks and several men form a posse to hunt them down, with Goodman joining them. Thompson and Fitzgerald, meanwhile, try to figure out a way to stop the attacks, but soon, the posse are killed and the pack of dogs begin converging on the town and campus, killing any person they come across.

Having never heard of the film's director, Burt Brinckerhoff, I assumed he was some one-time hack who either never made another movie again afterward or, if he did, they're so obscure that I'd never heard of them. It turns out that I was half right; since Dogs did nothing at the box-office, Brinckerhoff never directed another feature film, but he was far from a talentless hack with only that one credit on his filmography. Having started out as an actor on stage and then on television, he became a very prolific TV-director in the early 70's, directing episodes of just about every major TV show from then on into the 90's. Among his credits are Three's Company, Baretta, Dynasty, Cagney & Lacey, Newhart, Moonlighting, Remington Steele, Magnum, P.I., ALF, Growing Pains, Beverly Hills, 90210, and 7th Heaven, which he was also a producer on and which was his last bit of work before retiring. Dogs, as it turned out, wasn't his only brush with the horror genre, as he did a TV movie version of Frankenstein in 1986, but I think it's fair to say that he won't be remembered as any sort of unappreciated specialist in it.

I'll admit that this is the only thing with David McCallum that I've ever watched (I didn't even know who he was when I first saw it), and I doubt that he could've had the career and reputation he did without good reason, but I don't find him to be a very entertaining or engaging lead here. That could possibly be because his character, Harlan Thompson, is meant to be a reserved, introspective, and cynical man, one who feels like a fish out of water in the community in and around Southwestern University, as he sees its faculty as being made up of a bunch of fools who are more interested in their public status and perception than actual education, or backing up their theories with concrete proof. He admits as much as to newcomer Michael Fitzgerald, whom he tries to warn about the system in order to keep him from getting sucked into it, and feels that the students themselves, whom he often socializes with, suffer badly as a result of these failings. He also has a very hippy look and feel to him, with his hairstyle, beard, and casual way of dressing, and is often not without a beer in his hand. Because of his specialty in biology, Sheriff Jimmy Goodman often asks for Thompson's help in figuring out what's behind the recent spate of cattle deaths plaguing rancher Larry Ludecky. Shortly after he discovers that, one, the bite marks on the remains are of different sizes, suggesting varied attackers, and two, that the predators simply killed the cow rather than eating it, he inspects Ludecky's own body after he's killed. Having overheard Fitzgerald's theory about pheromones causing various types of animals, from insects to mammals, to come together and act as one collective consciousness, Thompson speculates that the attackers could be ordinary dogs behaving in this manner. Though he and Fitzgerald are, initially, unable to convince university president Martin Koppelman, and Thompson is threatened with firing if he goes to the authorities with his feelings, evidence of the dog attacks becomes impossible to ignore. The two of them attempt an experiment to prove what's causing the dogs to pack together and find a way to stop it, but the dog they use in the experiment escapes and joins up with the rest of them. As things get progressively worse, the two of them ultimately split up, with Thompson ending up trapped, along with his girlfriend, at her home when the dogs converge on it.

Speaking of said girlfriend, Caroline Donoghue (Sandra McCabe), her relationship with Thompson is so uninteresting and insignificant that it's almost not worth talking about, and neither is she. An English professor at the university, she and Thompson have actually broken up at the beginning of the movie but are still fairly friendly with each other, as shown during the dinner party. Moreover, when Caroline acts chummy towards Fitzgerald upon meeting him, Thompson is obviously threatened by it and subtly attempts to nip it in the bud. She accompanies him when he examines Larry Ludecky's corpse at the morgue, but is so horrified by the state of the body, along with the most recent of a number of blackouts that have been occurring on the campus, that she runs out of the building. Thompson tries to calm her down, but doesn't tell her why he needed to examine the corpse in the first place, much to her frustration. Still, the two of them part very amicably that night, despite Caroline inviting Thompson into her home, offering him "everything"; he's so preoccupied with his thoughts that he doesn't hear her. She eventually learns about the dog attacks after everyone else learns about the chaos at the kindergarten dog show, and when Thompson comes by to collect her, the two of them instead end up getting trapped in her house and then her garage. The whole time, there's the question of whether or not Caroline's own little dog, Cricket, is going to go crazy and attack as well, but she never does. And in the end, Thompson and Caroline are the only ones who are able to escape the campus alive.

Even though Michael Fitzgerald (George Wyner), the newest addition to Southwestern University's faculty, has a theory about pheromones that could possibly explain why the dogs are attacking, in the end, it amounts to nothing. What's more, not only does his and Thompson's attempt to prove it with an experiment go out the window when the dog escapes, but unlike Thompson, who's able to at least save Caroline from the dogs, Fitzgerald fails horribly on this score. Upon discovering that the police station has been attacked, the two of them then attempt to save Martin Koppelman when they see he's being attacked in his yard, only for Fitzgerald to accidentally shoot him. Naturally, he's severely traumatized by this, and nearly loses his nerve twice over when they next find the brutalized body of Koppelman's wife floating in the swimming pool, but with Thompson's help, he manages to pull himself together. With the two of them concerned about the students, Fitzgerald encourages Thompson to go for Caroline, while he warns the students. He gathers them all in the dorm's lobby and, telling them what's going on, adds that he's going to send them to the library, where they'll hole up until morning, when they can be safely evacuated. However, this proves difficult, as they don't take him seriously, and he then learns that one of the students, Howard, went to the cafeteria earlier. Fitzgerald goes there to get Howard, and while he, momentarily, saves him when he gets attacked, he's ultimately unable to save the other students, who all get mauled to death when the dogs manage to break into the library after they've taken cover in there. The last time Fitzgerald is seen alive, he's completely despondent and devastated over how badly he failed and walks off into the dark. Thompson and Caroline find his body while they're escaping at the end.

Coming just two years after Jaws, the film feels the need to have the authority figure who doesn't take the threat seriously out of fear of the effect it will have on them personally; in this case, it's the university's president, Martin Koppelman (Sterling Swanson). When Thompson and Fitzgerald come to him with their hypothesis that dogs are suddenly attacking people in packs, Koppelman refuses to listen, dismissing their examples of this having happened before as unrelated, and refuses to even, at the very

least, warn people to keep their dogs indoors, saying he won't keep his position for much longer if he does. And when Thompson talks about telling the authorities, he's threatened with being fired. At that moment, Koppelman gets a phone call about the attack at the kindergarten dog show, which his wife, Louise (Holly Harris), was attending. Arriving at the scene afterward with Thompson and Fitzgerald, Koppelman tries to downplay what happened, saying the children probably did something to provoke the dogs. Even when his wife insists that it was not like that, he still doesn't take it seriously. And though he does, at his wife's urging, call the governor and tell him about it, he beats around the bush, making annoying small-talk, and still tries to downplay the severity of what's going on when he gets to the point, even when the governor reveals that he himself has a dog. After sitting next to him and becoming frustrated as he rambles on like this, Louise finally decides she's had enough and takes the phone from him. She tells the governor that some people have been killed and about the kindergarten attack, telling him that they need some help. And when she gives the phone back to her husband, he tells the governor, "Don't mind her. She's a little upset." Thankfully, he does get his comeuppance when Thompson and Fitzgerald come upon him being attacked by his own dog in his yard, with Fitzgerald accidentally shooting him while trying to get the dog. Unfortunately, they then find Louise's body floating in the pool.

Sheriff Jimmy Goodman (Eric Server) initially calls on Thompson's expertise to determine what's behind the recent string of cattle deaths that have been plaguing Larry Ludecky's ranch, and also tells him about Ludecky's own death early on. Following the attack at the dog show, Goodman initially tries to dissuade some of the townspeople from going after the dogs themselves, but is then talked into joining them in order to keep things in order (one of the members of this posse, Homer, is played by Russ Grieve who, that same year, appeared as Big Bob Carter in The Hills Have Eyes). However, when they head out into the desert for the hunt, he has to deal with their being loud and not quite taking the situation seriously, as well as their drinking. As expected, they do get attacked, and everybody but Goodman is killed. He manages to flee the scene, but is attacked before he can make it back to his truck. He kills the dog that jumps him and does get back to his truck, but when he tries to call for help on his radio, he dies from his injuries.

The only other faculty members worth talking about are Charlotte Engle (Linda Gray) and Charles Aintry (Dean Santoro), both of whom are introduced at the dinner party at the beginning. Miss Engle shows some interest in Michael Fitzgerald when he's introduced to everybody, putting her glasses on in an apparent method of trying to make herself look attractive to him; Aintry, on the other hand, comes off as a tad antagonistic towards Fitzgerald, likely because of Miss Engle's interest in him. He also proves some

foreshadowing of what's about to happen, as he talks about being randomly attacked by a German shepherd that was one of his students' seeing eye dog. The others laugh him off, though, as he gets melodramatic about it, saying the dog, "Leapt up on the podium and began making hostile overtures. Definitely threatening gestures! Baring his teeth, and so forth...", then adds, "And furthermore, I'm convinced this slavering creature intended to devour me. And would've done, too." Yet, interestingly, there's never any sign that he was killed by the dogs, as he's last seen walking away from Miss Engle's house after she refuses to let him come in after he brings her home following a date. He does get creeped out when he hears the distant sound of the dogs howling and, more than likely, he was killed offscreen. We do see Miss Engle get it, however, as she gets in the shower, only for a Doberman Pinscher to then get into her house and attack her.

As for the students (most of whom are clearly in their 30's, at least), the most memorable one is Howard (Barry Greenberg), this heavyset guy who kind of looks like how Don Coscarelli did back then, only much fatter. They go for the expected kind of humor with him: he eats a lot, is a bit dim-witted, and is often the butt of various jokes, though it's in an affectionate way. In his first scene in Michael Fitzgerald's class, where he's talking about his theory on pheromones, Howard says, "You mean, I might be releasing odors to tell other people what to do?", and naturally, everyone bursts out laughing, as Fitzgerald comments, "You'd make a great straight-man, Howard." Later, when everyone's gathered in this bar area, having fun, Howard gets playfully pushed out of his seat, and after another girl nicely turns down his asking if he can sit in her lap, he goes over to join some other students who are talking with Thompson. Most significantly, when Fitzgerald is trying to warn the students about the dogs in the dorm's lobby, he learns that Howard went over to the cafeteria and has to go there to save him. There, Howard, who has a key, helps himself to some milk and rolls, only to be ambushed by some dogs that manage to get inside. They trap him atop a table, and when Fitzgerald arrives, he encourages him to throw the rolls to distract them, something he's actually hesitant to do at first. He does in the end, and he and Fitzgerald run out of the building and back to the dorm, only to find that the students have all moved to the library by themselves. Poor Howard nearly keels over from all this running, due to both his weight and his having asthma, but when they come upon a couple of the dogs' victims, he panics and runs to the library. The other frightened students don't let him in (mind you, one of the doors clearly falls open during this scene), and a dog jumps at and crashes him through the glass, allowing the other dogs in as well. This doesn't kill Howard in and of itself, but he is later seen among the many dead students.

One compliment that I can give Dogs is that it is a well-shot movie, with some truly lovely imagery of the desert landscape where it's set, especially at dusk and sunset. Speaking of which, while there is a scene that was obviously shot day-for-night, all of the other nighttime scenes were actually done at night, making use of the extreme darkness you get in these kinds of environments. Cinematography-wise, the film does come off like a TV movie for the most part, but Burt Brinckerhoff and his DP, Robert Steadman, manage to come up with some interesting moments of

camerawork, starting it off with a POV from Martin Koppelman's dog as he wanders around the dinner party, going up to various guests (literally the first thing you see when the movie begins is a guy petting the dog), before he's let out of the gate and joins the other dogs as they run down the street. As you might expect, there are a number of these shots from the dogs' low-angle point-of-view later on, when they begin stalking and attacking people. There are also some moments of fairly long, unbroken shots, with

the most memorable to me being one of Thompson's car early on, as he and Fitzgerald drive to the campus, and Thompson tells him of his low opinion of the other professors and the state of the place overall. It may not seem like much to write home about, but it starts out in the distance, with them driving along a small, barbwire fence, then coming around a small ridge, down a slope and dirt path, past the camera, and then into the parking lot, as the camera pulls back. And finally, while I never find the movie to be truly scary or suspenseful, they do manage to come up with a fairly eerie shot of the dogs silhouetted against the full moon, before they attack and kill Larry Ludecky.

I do like the setting of this town and college campus out in the middle of the southern California desert, but then again, I always love these kinds of isolated locations in horror films. You have the campus, with the classrooms, cafeteria, and student dorm in one spot, and the homes of the professors among the regular townspeople nearby. While all of the homes which we see the interiors of look fairly upscale, Koppelman's home atop a hill, overlooking the countryside, is very posh, with its most notable feature being its big swimming pool and patio area in

the back. There's also a kindergarten and elementary school within the community, as well as a sheriff's station and the ranch owned by Ludecky. And in the background of some shots is a linear accelerator commissioned by the government, which often causes power outages in the neighborhood and is also where top secret experiments are being conducted. Finally, there's the desert landscape all around the town, which is both beautiful and very isolating, ensuring that there's no help on the way or to go to when things really get bad.

While it was likely made because of what a phenomenon Jaws had been just a couple of years earlier, if Dogs is akin to any previous killer animal movie, it's actually The Birds. Like the Hitchcock classic, this is a story of something that's part of our everyday world, and which we see so regularly that we don't even think about it, suddenly turning deadly for no discernible reason. Unlike The Birds, some explanations are suggested, like Michael Fitzgerald's pheromone theory and the linear reactor near the college, the site of some top secret government

experiments, but we never get a definitive answer, as the exact nature of said experiments is never revealed (all we ever see of the accelerator is when it's in the background of some shots), and Fitzgerald and Harlan Thompson's attempt to prove that it's the pheromones goes down the drain when their test dog escapes and joins the pack. By extension, unlike in most horror films with a science fiction element, especially those made in the several decades prior to this, the scientists are unable to come up with a method of stopping the threat. They're also wrong about some things, like

when Thompson says that the dogs act normal when they're alone, as we do see some dogs attacking people while they're by themselves. Also like The Birds, the climax involves some of our leads boarding themselves in a house to stave off the attacking dogs, and the film ends with the marauding dogs still on the loose and our remaining protagonists simply getting out of dodge, while hearing news reports that there have been similar attacks in nearby towns. So, while it wasn't the work of a certified master of cinema like

Hitchcock, there was a lot of potential in this concept. In fact, it could've proven to be more personally frightening and disturbing than The Birds, as so many people not only have dogs as pets but the bond between a dog and its owner is often very, very strong. Thus, it wouldn't just be terrifying but deeply upsetting to think that something could turn your beloved pooch and companion into part of a marauding pack that wants to rip you apart. We do get a hint of this in the movie, as the elderly woman who

tries to help the student who wrecks on his motorcycle and is attacked by the dogs is then horrified to see her own dog take part in mauling him to death, as well as when the kindergarten students' dogs suddenly turn vicious during the dog show. And like the love birds that Melanie Daniels brought to Mitch and his family, the whole time there's a question of whether or not Caroline's little dog Cricket will turn on them, (also like the love birds, he never does).

However, the idea doesn't work here, for several reasons. One is that, while there are some types of dogs amid the pack that are definitely threatening, like German shepherds, Dobermans, and Great Danes (no Rottweilers or Pit-bulls, though, strangely), there are others, like various kinds of mutts, sheepdogs, and even Dalmatians, that are hard to take seriously. I don't doubt that those dogs can be potentially dangerous if provoked (heck, before Cujo, no one looked at St. Bernards as a potential threat, despite their massive size), and that is certainly part of the

terror they're going for, but it's kind of hard to take it seriously when you see people running from them (I guess I should be glad that they didn't throw some chihuahuas or dachshunds into the mix). That's probably why they have the more traditionally intimidating dogs do most of the attacks. It also doesn't help that I can't get into just about any of the characters. In fact, not only do I find most of the lead characters bland, but because Koppelman is such a brown-nosing asshole when talking to the governor,

and the students, other than Howard, act really obnoxious and jerky when Fitzgerald is trying to warn them about the situation, I don't particularly care when they get killed (in fact, it's their own fault, as they decide to walk over to the library by themselves while Fitzgerald is out helping Howard). Thus, all I have left are the attack scenes, and while there are quite a few of them, for various reasons (camerawork, editing, etc.), most of them don't excite me like they

should. It has nothing to do with bad special effects, as they used real dogs throughout the entire shoot, so you don't have shots of obvious puppet dogs biting at people, and I've heard that there were moments where the dogs got carried away and injured some people, so I tip my hat to them in that respect, but for much of the movie, even during these scenes, I find myself feeling bored.

One person who really champions Dogs is author Lee Gambin in his book, Massacred By Mother Nature: Exploring the Natural Horror Film, an excerpt from which is included as liner notes in that Scorpion Blu-Ray (by the way, does the concept of liner notes annoy anyone else?; is it too much to put little slips of paper with this information inside the case?). He praises just about everything concerning this movie, describing the screenplay by O'Brian Tomalin as "acutely intelligent" with "biting charm," and also finds some subtext within it. Namely, he notes how

efficiently the different breeds of dogs work together when they form a pack, whereas the townspeople, when they're brought together, are unable to do anything but either argue about what must be done, not take it seriously, or act like fools, which leads to their getting killed, viewing this as an analogy of how fragile the human condition is when compared to those of supposedly lower species. Gambin also cites the dogs as an allegory for how dangerous mob mentality can be, as well as for the rebellious youths that were covered in the media at the time, as the dogs attack their owners and oppressors. Definitely an interesting way to view the film, although I find it so dull that it doesn't trigger any such thoughts in my head.

But as bad as the movie is on the whole, they still could've just ended it in a manner akin to The Birds, with Thompson and Caroline leaving town after finding that everyone's dead, hearing reports of the dog attacks continuing elsewhere, and it would've been fair enough. But then, right at the very end, they throw in something so ridiculous that you can't believe they intended for it to be taken seriously (and yet, that seems to be the case). As they drive away, they hear on the radio, "Officials say that, as far as can be determined, only dogs are now being

affected." And as they round a corner, they pass by a cat on the side of the road, with the camera zooming in and freezing on it as it lets out an echoing meow. Do I need to say anything else? Again, they treat this with the utmost seriousness, and according to the film's IMDB trivia page (the sole item on said page), there were plans to do a sequel revolving around cats but that was scrapped when the film bombed. 

As I always do, I tried, and was able, to find some pros to Dogs. Besides the good cinematography and setting, there are some moments that are a bit spooky, mainly when the characters hear the sound of the dogs' howling in the distance. It's a stock sound effect that I've heard elsewhere (it's the first thing you hear when Fright Night begins), but it still comes off as eerie when heard repeatedly, growing louder and louder. Also, there are some moments of humor that I kind of like, in addition to the stuff with Howard. For instance, when Thompson goes to examine Larry

Ludecky's corpse, the actual doctor is busy dealing with a guy named Carl, who's tripping massive balls. Seeing just how bad off he is, the doctor mutters, "Jesus," to which Carl responds by standing up, smiling and with his arms stretched out to the ceiling, saying, "Jesus. Yeah. Yeah." They lead him into the next room and try to lay him down on this table, while he starts raving about Jesus, embracing the doctor and exclaiming, "I get it now. It's all so clear. It's perfect. Jesus, I love you!" Thompson tries to get

the doctor's attention, saying he's there to examine Ludecky's body, but the doctor says he has more important things to worry about, noting, "He's dead." That gets Carl going again, as he gets up, exclaiming, "He's dead, yeah, but he rose again! Can you dig it?!", and has to be forced back down, yelling, "God, it's so beautiful!" That scene was so out of left-field and the guy's performance so delirious that I couldn't help but smile at it. And when they're performing the pheromone experiment, Fitzgerald falls asleep and Thompson startles him awake with a short, shallow yap, then offers him a beer, saying, "Woof, woof."

The film is also fairly gory, mostly in the aftermath of the dog attacks. Early on, you see the grisly remains of one of Ludecky's cattle, and when Thompson examines Ludecky's own corpse (all you see is the arm), you see some pretty nasty bite wounds, but once the attacks really amp up, you get more gruesome makeup work, culminating in the aftermath of the attack on the students in the library, where the camera pans across their bloody, bite-covered corpses littering the building's interior. There are also some nasty effects during the actual attacks, with close-ups of the dogs biting into people's arms and whatnot, and dragging them away.

The movie, I think, tries to create an unsettling picture of dogs right from the opening, with a slow-motion montage of Koppelman's dog running into the street, where he meets up with various others and they all head off into the wilderness together. Again, I believe the purpose is to get across that it's unusual for these different types of dogs to suddenly group together like this, and make you wonder what they're up to and where they're going, but the slow-motion and editing, combined with the well-done but melodramatic music

and camera angles, like the dogs coming up over a hill in the street, make it feel more overly serious and silly than anything else (the actual title even starts out white but blood drips down across the letters, turning them red; real scary). The first onscreen attack, that of Larry Ludecky, occurs when he's staked out near his ranch, waiting for the animals that are attacking his cattle to show up, and it proves to be one of the better ones. The buildup is fairly effective, as we first hear the dogs' eerie howling and see them silhouetted

against the moon in the background, and the attack itself is pretty vicious, with a Doberman jumping at and knocking Ludecky down, before he and a German shepherd start mauling him (however, the day-for-night photography can make it difficult to make everything out). It's done through wide shots of the dogs biting and tearing at him, as well as close-ups of their snarling jaws and him yelling in pain, and his own dog, whom we saw in an earlier scene, shows up but, instead of joining in the attack himself, just watches from afar and barks (whether he's doing it as

part of the pack or because he's too scared to help Ludecky is unclear). The second attack happens not long afterward, as a group of dogs are shown sitting in the street, causing a student on his motorcycle to wreck when he's startled upon seeing them. Though he's not seriously hurt, when he stands up and yells at the dogs for causing him to crash, they promptly run at and attack him. Hearing the commotion, an elderly lady comes out of her house nearby, with her own dog, Napoleon, running on ahead of her. She feebly yells at the dogs attacking the student to leave him

alone, when she's then shocked to see that Napoleon has joined in. And then, before she knows what happened, a Doberman jumps at her from the side and knocks her to the ground. The other dogs get off the student and attack her as well, but the effectiveness of this scene is hurt considerably by the woman's over-the-top yelling and pleading for help, which sound funny rather than anguished and disturbing, especially when she yells, "Oh, my God, help!" The dogs drag her away, while the student dies from his wounds at the scene.

The next attack is at the kindergarten dog show. The show starts off well, with one dog doing a trick for its owner, when another begins barking aggressively and disobeying its owner's command to sit. An adult intervenes, trying to stop the dog, and then gets the kid away from it, when all of the other dogs suddenly start barking in a threatening manner. One of the teachers instructs the kids to drop the leashes and slowly come with her, and the other adults begin to follow suit when they realize how dangerous things

are getting. Everyone takes off in a run and the dogs chase after them, running them off the football field where the show was being held. They run through a gate around the corner of the building and take cover inside. Not nearly as tense or thrilling a scene as you would hope for. Later, while Jimmy Goodman leads the posse into the wilderness to hunt the dogs, Thompson and Fitzgerald perform their experiment by placing Koppelman's dog in a hermetically-sealed cage and exposing him to an odor they hope will

prove their theory. Out in the desert, as Goodman and the others are gathered around a campfire, they're spooked when they hear the sound of the dogs howling. As the sound gets closer, they start panicking about what to do, finally opting to kill both their flashlights and the fire. Back at the campus, the scientists hear the howling, and the dog reacts to it inside the cage, growing aggressive and tearing his way through the plastic covering. He runs off to join the pack, while Thompson and Fitzgerald duck inside the building. They then come back out when it quiets

down and decide to go find Goodman, unaware that he's out in the desert with the posse. The group is terrified at the sound of the howling, which appears to be all around them, when a German shepherd comes running out of the darkness and knocks one man to the ground. As he's mauled, more dogs come in and attack the others, with the men futilely trying to fight them off (the use of slow-motion and lethargic editing hurts this scene's effectiveness). Goodman runs off into the dark, putting a lot of distance between himself and the site, and then stops behind a bush and

scans his surroundings. Not seeing anything, he tries to head on back to his truck, when he's jumped from atop a rock by a Doberman. He's pinned down and viciously bitten and scratched at, as he reaches for his dropped revolver nearby. He manages to get a hold of it and shoot the dog dead, and after lying there for a bit, he crawls and gets to his feet, then runs as best as he can, despite his injuries. He manages to reach his truck and, climbing halfway into the front seat, tries to call for help on his radio. However, he's not able to get much out before succumbing to his injuries.

Elsewhere, Professor Aintry brings Professor Engle home after their date, with the former heading back to his car in a sour mode after being rejected. On the way, he's startled by the sound of the dogs howling in the distance, and briefly turns back towards the house, before opting to just head on to his car. He hears the sound again, which grows louder and more threatening, and this encourages him to quickly duck inside the car and drive away. Inside the house, Miss Engle prepares to take a shower, while a conspicuous POV shot from outside her window signals that she's

being watched. She turns on the radio in her bedroom while removing her clothes, unaware that she left a sliding door leading outside slightly ajar. Her stalker waits outside it until she walks into the bathroom and the shower, after which it quickly bounds inside. Before she knows what happened, the dog, another Doberman, viciously attacks, ripping down the shower curtain and going after her with its teeth. She tries to fight it off but it bites at her arm, then grabs her, pulls her out of the shower, and across the floor, leaving a trail of blood behind. After brutalizing her,

it runs out of the house. Meanwhile, Thompson and Fitzgerald head to the police station to find Goodman, only to find the place seemingly abandoned. Thompson goes out to the garage, thinking Goodman and his deputy may be out there, but Fitzgerald then finds the deputy dead inside a closet when he opens the door and his mangled body tumbles out. He calls for Thompson, who comes running back in and sees the body for himself. He attempts to contact Goodman on the radio, unaware that he's dead as

well. Getting no answer, they grab some rifles, as well as some boxes of shells, and run back to Thompson's car. They don't get far down the street before coming upon Dr. Koppelman's house, where he's being attacked by his own dog. Fitzgerald attempts to save Koppelman, only to shoot and kill him instead of the dog. The dog actually plays dead beside Koppelman, then gets up and attempts to run away, but is then shot dead himself by Thompson. Once inside, Thompson and the distraught Fitzgerald find that Koppelman's wife is dead too, floating on the pool surface. With that, they separate, with Thompson going after Caroline, while Fitzgerald sees to the students at the dorm.

At Caroline's house, she and Thompson barricade themselves inside when they hear the dogs howling nearby, while at the dorm, Fitzgerald learns that Howard is at the cafeteria and goes over there to get him. There, while helping himself to whatever he can find, Howard is ambushed by several dogs that slip in through an open door in the kitchen. He has to get up onto the table when they start barking at him viciously, which is where Fitzgerald finds him when he runs in. He tells Howard to throw the food into the corner to distract the dogs, but while two of them go

for it, a German shepherd continues to menace Howard. Fitzgerald manages to incapacitate the dog by whacking it with his empty rifle, and he and Howard rush out of the building and across the campus, heading back to the dorm. There, the students get tired of waiting and decide to head over to the library by themselves, ignoring the one among them who insists they do exactly as Fitzgerald asked them to and wait for him. Back at Caroline's house, she and Thompson are unaware that some dogs have managed to get inside through an open upstairs

window (don't ask me how they got up there, though). Caroline goes to get dressed so they can meet up with Fitzgerald at the college, only to suddenly come back downstairs, screaming. Handing her little dog named Cricket to her, Thompson blows away a German shepherd that comes down the stairs, then runs to meet up with Caroline in the back of the kitchen. As more dogs come running downstairs, they run out the back door and into the garage, where a Doberman that was seen trying to get through the front door earlier

jumps the fence and starts scratching and barking at the door leading into the garage. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald and Howard make it back to the dorm, only to find it empty. They then head to the library, after the others. Speaking of them, they stop dead when they hear the dogs howling, the sound of which promptly panics and sends them running. Instantly, a pack is on their tail, as they run across the campus football field. One guy falls to the ground amid the chaos, but when another comes to help them up, the

two of them opt to play dead instead of running after the others. This ploy works, as the dogs run past them and chase the others as they run to the library; however, several others who fall to the ground aren't so lucky, as they get mauled. The two stragglers then get up and run after the others, who rush to the library and scramble through the doors. When they show up, they're let inside, just before the dogs reach them.

Thompson and Caroline aren't faring much better in the latter's garage, as the dogs are trying to tear through the backdoor, with Thompson noting that they've become stronger than normal. He grabs some pieces of wood and tools and, with Caroline's help, starts boarding the door up. Once they've done that, they get in the car and prepare to burst through the main door to get out... until Caroline realizes she left her car keys up in the kitchen. Thompson then attempts to hot-wire the car and, after popping the hood, searches the garage for a wire to make it work.

But just when he finds one and is about to make use of it, the dogs suddenly grow quiet. The two of them go back up to the door and listen closely. Though they still don't hear anything, Thompson is sure the dogs are still there and gets back to hot-wiring the car. Caroline watches him, when she turns and sees a German shepherd trying to claw its way through a small opening in the wall (I thought it was a doggy-door for Cricket, but there turns out to be more than one). She screams at this and Thompson runs, grabs a big section of wood, and puts it up against the

opening, nailing it to the wall. More dogs try to get through another such opening farther down along the wall, and Thompson smacks at one with the hammer, telling Caroline to get him another board. But when she runs to find one, he kicks at the dogs, only for one to grab his leg and pull his foot through the opening, along with much of his leg. He yells for Caroline and she manages to grab and pull his leg back through, and they both quickly take cover inside the car, as one dog rips its way through the thin, unfinished dry-wall.

Back at the library, the dogs are waiting outside the door for a chance to get at those who've taken cover inside. Nearby, Fitzgerald and Howard come upon those whom the dogs killed during the flight to the library. The sight of this panics Howard and he runs across the campus to the library, with Fitzgerald chasing after him. When he gets to the doors, Howard begs to be let inside, and that's when the dogs come at him, with one jumping at and causing him to crash backwards through the glass. Instead of killing

Howard, the dog promptly goes after someone else, while the other frightened students watch. The other dogs come running through the shattered window and chase the students upstairs and throughout the building, all while Fitzgerald watches from outside, unable to do anything with his empty rifle. He then quickly takes cover elsewhere and, later, finds everyone inside the building dead, along with some bodies right outside. The sight of all this carnage leaves him completely despondent and he walks off into the night.

Come morning, Thompson opens the garage door and scans the surrounding neighborhood with his eyes. Seeing no sign of any dogs, he takes the boards off the backdoor and tells Caroline to get some stuff, while he readies the car. But when she walks through the backdoor and heads to the exterior door into the kitchen, she finds the dogs lying in wait inside. She quickly closes the door, as the dogs lunge at her, and she and Thompson run out of the garage and across the street. They commandeer another car over there and, while the dogs do catch up to them, with some

managing to get on top of the car, they're able to get inside, start it up, and drive away from them. They then leave the town, coming upon an abandoned campus police car and some dead bodies on the ground, including Fitzgerald's. That's when they up and leave the area altogether, ending the movie.

The music score, composed by Alan Oldfield, an obscure composer whose other credits include stuff like King Kung Fu (I only know about that movie thanks to James Rolfe) and The Forest, is actually pretty good, if a bit melodramatic for some of the scenes it's used in. Case in point, the main theme, which you first hear over the opening credits (and which also plays over the ending credits). It's a memorable piece for sure, with a main melody that does stick in your head for a while after you first hear it, along with some weird electronic touches here and there, but like I said, when you play it to a montage of a bunch of dogs joining up together as they run down a street and into the countryside, it comes off as silly rather than unsettling. The rest of the music isn't too shabby either, with the music for the attack scenes often doing much of the heavy-lifting, and the low-key, poignant moments being scored appropriately enough, and, if nothing else, you can say it's certainly one of the film's better aspects.

At the end of his writing about it in the liner notes excerpt from his book, Lee Gambin says that Dogs is a "wonderful film." I won't deny that it does have some good things about it, like the cinematography of the California landscape, some interesting moments of camerawork, a nice setting, effective gory makeup effects for the dog attacks, some chuckle-worthy instances of humor, and a fair music score, but on the whole, it's not as entertaining as you'd hope it would be. The cast of characters are bland and uninteresting, despite the presence of David McCallum; though the use of real dogs rather than any special effects throughout the whole film is commendable, the attack scenes are often not as thrilling or intense as they really should be; and despite some bits of creepiness, it fails to take full advantage of a potentially scary and disturbing concept, ending on a note that provokes nothing but laughter. As always, this movie does likely have some fans who have nostalgia for it and get something out of it, but for me personally, all I have to say in closing is, "Woof."