Dogs of Hell

Next to approximately three dozen of other horror themes and subgenres, yours truly is also a giant fan of movies with killer dogs. After recently having seen the surprisingly decent 2015 Aussie effort "The Pack", my interest to seek out some older canine flicks got re-sparked, but then you are instantly confronted with the large number of truly bad titles that exist here. The early and mid-70s still spawned a few cool movies, like "Trapped" (1973), "Dogs" (1976) and "The Pack" (1977), but the 1980s excelled in horrible killer dog movies! The list is quite long already ("Mongrel", "Play Dead", "Monster Dog", "Humongous") and "Rottweiler" (a.k.a. "Dogs of Hell") may be added to it as well. Like with the others, the best thing about this film is the poster image, and everything else is beyond bad. The script is weak, the lead characters don't have any charisma, the acting performances are miserable, the few potentially exciting dog-attack sequences are poorly lit and fuzzy, and the whole thing is stuffed with irrelevant and downright dumb footage (like for example mud-wrestling contests and bar fights). US Military scientist Fletcher was assigned to train a pack of Rottweilers into becoming powerful army weapons, but at the beginning of the film we witness him begging to his superiors to abandon the entire project because the animals lost all their emotional capacities and developed a hatred against humans. The military top refuses, naturally, and the dogs escape during transportation. Apart from unstoppable fighting machines, these nasty puppies are apparently also Houdinis, since they manage to escape from a truck that immediately explodes after a collision. Now they are at large in a sort of mountain spa resort community, with only a lousy Sheriff and a couple of rednecks with guns as their opponents. I understand from the other reviews that lead actor/producer Earl Owensby enjoys some kind of cult reputation, but I certainly cannot guess where that comes from. His performance as the Sheriff is the worst of all (hardly could understand a word he was saying) and he also didn't bother to liberate any budget for the action scenes. Isn't that what producers are supposed to do? There are a few idiotic and senseless plot twists, like the devoted scientist suddenly turning into a madman, and far too many sentimental dialogues/monologues coming from people literally nobody cares about.

So, weren't there any good killer dog movies in the 80s then? Well, the adaptation of Stephen King's novel "Cujo" is enjoyable, but also certainly not a masterpiece. The only truly brilliant film that I would recommend in this genre is Samuel Fuller's "White Dog" (1982).

Okay, I give up. It really is impossible to make a good killer dog movie. This is a prime example of what not to do. Don't set the movie in Hickville, don't cast a bunch of real hicks, and don't take ten years to get to the dog action. The title was so promising: Dogs of Hell!! I was more than ready for some hell hound horror. You do get a small dose of that, it's just not what you want. Chick screams then gets covered in blood. You hear the dog panting but you never see him. The camera stays in the dogs POV. The Rottweilers and the humans are never onscreen at the same time. Dogs of Hell is a mega-low budget movie and is not worth your time. This dog just has no bite.

"They were perfectly trained for one task: Manslaughter!"

An unbelievably bad effort by independent producer Earl Owensby, not just for the fact it rips off "The Pack" and "Dogs". It's unbelievable in its ineptness, starting with photography so poor (especially during the night sequences) that the movie looks like it was shot in 8 MM. The attack sequences are very lazy - mostly we just HEAR the attacks instead of seeing them, and when we DO see them, it's only for a split second. We do see the aftermath of the attacks, though the poor makeup jobs aren't any compensation. The main problem with the movie is that it's simply BORING for the most part, devoting most of the running time to showing these country folk talking to each other and going around the area. I can't see ANY reason why this could be of interest to anyone, even if someone happened to star or work on the movie. If you want to see a killer dog movie, see "The Pack". Heck, even see "Dogs" over this; though it's not very good, it's a masterpiece next to "Dogs Of Hell"!

This movie is so stupid. I went through a lot to try to find this movie. I only could rent it anyway. Maybe it was just for rental because it was too bad enough to keep on the market for people to buy. You could not even see the dogs killing people as if they would switch the camera every minute. Being a horror movie genre fan, you would think the title had a good significance as to why I would want to see this movie really bad. I wonder are there any other killer dog movies that beat this one.

yup... it's kind of fun to watch "Dogs of Hell" if you like to watch movies that were originally intended to be in 3D and pretend to be wow-ed by the scenes where they intend to shoot, throw, or point things out at you. Originally released as "Rottweiler" in 1982, you can see how the entire movie is relying on the fact that at some point they're gonna throw something towards the camera. As I watched it I thought after the first hour that I'd rented a movie called "Mystery Dog" because you never actually saw what was attacking these 80's act-bots (so amazing how they could manage to have such 2-dimensional actors in a 3D movie). And the dogs you eventually see look like your neighbor's dogs do when the kids tease it...hardly a fright. But it wasn't as though the film were a real disappointment as I hadn't expected much. The highlight of the movie for me was when the sherriff would shoot the dogs with his big ol' 44. You'd see the picture cut away from a snarling rottweiler to a cheap, paper machete casting of a rottweiler's head that would then explode throwing bologna, chocolate milk, stale beer and whatever else they decided would look like dog brains all over the place. Yup. "Dogs of Hell" was a moderately humorous way to neglect quality time and a gem if you're into watching obscure movies that don't diserve to be remembered just because you know they wont be.