Man's Best Friend

What we have here is a cute lovable dog taken as a pet into a house by a news reporter Lori (Ally Sheedy) after she rescues him from a genetic research facility, unaware that Joseph Mengele's brother Jarret (Lance Henriksen) has genetically altered the dog performing vivisection giving him enhanced strength, speed, and senses. The dog can climb trees, understand different languages, he enjoys being a peeping Tom when couples get intimate, ( but we dont get to see any nudity), the dog can copulate n produce multiple puppies n most of all it can camouflage itself. Watch out for the camouflage scene man. The film has some nasty kills but mostly offscreen n it lacked tension apart from the poor cat scene. The tag line ridiculed Cujo but they forgot that Cujo is filled with genuine tension n suspense.

I first saw this in the mid 90s on a vhs. Revisited it few days back.

I was highly disappointed to see that the dog who plays Max in this film is not credited anywhere on the IMDB page - and he was the best actor in the whole darn movie! The whole half-dog/half-human brain thing (at least I think that's what it was supposed to be) was pulled off incredibly well by this pooch. I mean, he had EXPRESSIONS! When he looked up at Ally Sheedy's boyfriend after he tried to slip him some spiked dog chow - that LOOK! GRRRR!!! It was great! That dog should get an Oscar! ;-)

Man's Best Friend (1999) is a childhood classic that I recently rewatched on Tubi. The storyline follows a genetically engineered dog who escapes from his laboratory and is adopted by an oblivious family. He becomes over protective of the child in the family and begins a killing spree. The creator of the dog will try to help law enforcement track down the dog and stop the killing spree.

This movie is written and directed by John Lafia (Child's Play 2) and stars Lance Henriksen (Aliens), Ally Sheedy (The Breakfast Club), Fredric Lehne (Men in Black), Robert Costanzo (Die Hard 2) and John Cassini (Se7en).

This is definitely one of those movies that's more fun than good. Lance Henriksen is awesome in this and always easy to root for, whether he's a good or bad guy. There's a bunch of light hearted scenes in this that make you smile - the opening post man sequence, the female dog back and forth and the cat scene are all worthwhile. However, the kill scenes always disappoint me and they all could have been better. The storyline is fairly straightforward and the conclusion is predictable.

Overall, this is a fun movie to watch but just an average addition to the horror genre. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it once.

TV news reporter Lori Tanner (Ally Sheedy) investigates a tip from an employee at research lab EMAX who claims the lab is involved in unethical and inhumane animal testing. Lori with camera operator Annie (Tula M. Marcus) video tape the mutilated animals and come across a Tibetan Mastiff named Max with whom Lori becomes attached to and the two take him with him in the confusion after they're discovered by a security guard. When Max saves Lori from a mugger in the parking lot of a grocery store she decides to keep the dog much to the annoyance of her boyfriend Perry (Fredric Lehne) against whom Max voices his contempt. Meanwhile Dr. Jarret (Lance Henriksen) head researcher at EMAX and Max's original owner enlists the help of the police in finding the dog as Max is a genetically engineered and mentally unstable super hybrid of enhance strength, speed, and aggression whose inhibitor drugs are wearing off and will send Max on a rampage.

Following John Lafia's success co-writing Child's Play and directing Child's Play 2, Lafia was interested in doing a monster film centered around a dog in the vein of The Terminator by way of Frankenstein. Initially envisioned as much more grandiose in scale, Lafia dialed back some of his ideas in order to be more manageable on the budget New Line provided him and his team. Released in November of 1993, New Line had considered the film a possible franchise starter that could replace their Nightmare on Elm Street series but while the movie made back a little over twice its $6 million budget, it was seen as only a minor success and not really having any staying power. Critical reception of the time tended to skew negative and audiences were also split on the film. There's some decent craft behind Man's Best Friend, but I don't think it fully works despite its best effort.

I guess the best way to describe Man's Best Friend is "what if the movie Beethoven had the dog kill people?" and that's where the movie gets most of its humorous edge from as it's shot, acted and directed not unlike how you'd approach a typical dog comedy from the 90s such as Bingo or Beethoven and comes with typical dog shenanigans like chasing mailman/paperboys or urinating on fire hydrants only with a lethal edge for the former and an acid element for the latter. While the structure is all there for a good darkly comic horror film, I feel like the film struggles with the tone of something like this and rather than comedy and horror sides complementing each other it instead feels like we're flipping between a family comedy and a slasher movie. When you compare the film to other horror comedies of this ilk such as Gremlins or Tremors which like Man's Best Friend were also darkly comic monster movies but unlike Man's Best Friends they felt like they had a consistent tone throughout the film. With Man's Best Friend the humor never felt integrated into the horror as scenes like Max devouring a cat or going next door to rape a collie while the song "Puppy Love" plays don't really land because they just feel kind of awkward without actually being funny. The cast (dog included) do a good job with the material as Ally Sheedy is good as our heroine and Lance Henriksen is also good (arguably too good) as our antagonist Dr. Jarrett.

Man's Best Friend is the kind of movie that has clear effort and a solid idea of what it wants to be, but the execution doesn't really land where it should for a movie of this ilk. All the elements are in place from the actors, to the effects, to the dog itself, but the movie never gets a good handle of its tone in the same way either of the Child's Play movies did.

Lori Tanner (Ally Sheedy) a mediocre reporter who dreams of big-time. She gets her big break as she sneaks into a laboratory that is accused of having animal cruelty. She unwittingly releases poor pitiful Max, a lab experiment hound, in her pursuit for justice and a great story.

Max returns the favor by protecting her from a mugger. They soon bond and Lori is oblivious to Max's potential for good or evil.

The fun part of the movie is that we get to see Max's potential for good or evil. The situation makes us cheer for Max and overlook his few foibles. We also suspect and look forward to our local authorities (Robert Costanzo, and John Cassini) becoming dog chow.

It was a nice touch having the comic relief of dog catchers in this presentation.

It's not the best film or the worst or the best story or the worst but it is worth watching.