L'ora di uccidere

All of the critical scorn directed at Dog Eat Dog is rather perplexing, since it's a tense, starkly photographed, bleak and sleazy shot of cool 60s crime melodrama.

Dog Eat Dog is similar in its strange look and feel to Roman Polanski's Cul-de-Sac (there's even a bald creep who resembles Donald Pleasence), but with a more straightforward hard boiled edge and noirish dialogue, with Cameron Mitchell cynically dubbing Jayne Mansfield's breasts her "double indemnity".

Shot in beautiful locations and full of interesting, unusual faces, this is a crazy winner that ought to please fans of Mitchell, Mansfield, or offbeat genre films and black comedies generally. Mitchell even gets to go nuts and tear apart a whorehouse, yelling incoherently about money and gasoline. Really, what could be better?

This film had all the elements of a film gone wrong:an international cast,standard heist plot,Euro pop/jazz soundtrack,ham handed action and Jayne Mansfield. Could any film project have been more predestined to be awful?

I was expecting so much worse. Imagine the surprise of discovering how much fun this movie was with all of it's sorry bits working together in some sort of obtuse harmony.

The dialog is over the top outrageous. Check these three prizes just from the trailer:

"Crackers, it's just mad money"....

"You are rude dirty and ugly. We do not cater to rude,dirty,ugly men. Get out."

Or better yet: Madame Benoit:"Where did you get this stuff? It's dishwater." Bartender: "It's the prunes, Madame.Since Socialism they don't let the peasants crush them with their feet any more. It impairs the flavor." Madame Benoit: "It's still dishwater."

And those are just a few of a beginning to end feast of howlers. How could one not love dialog like this ? It's so absurd it's almost genius.

To think Arthur Miller worked so hard on "The Misfits".I will have to watch the film again just to catch all the gems.

And yet: Jayne Mansfield was never again more natural, seeming to have dispensed with the "Divoon" Marilyn parody and almost playing it straight.

It could be the dubbing that made her seem more part of an ensemble rather than a running gag. Someone else dubbed her voice.It works and the dubbing is very well done for a 60s Euro film, everything is in harmony.

It's an awful film on so many levels, but consistently awful from plot to soundtrack, to dialog. It's a package deal that works on all those levels because of it's awfulness. It's what makes "Dog Eat Dog" fun.

The cast is interesting and watchable, the heavy breathing dialog worthy of John Waters, the euro artiness of it gives it an air of sophistication, even legitimacy that was probably never intended.

An accident of a film: accidentally entertaining. One of those "so bad it's good" films. Perfect for a double bill with Elizabeth Taylor's "The Driver's Seat".

Such a surprise to find it so entertaining as I was definitely expecting to feel depressed after watching Jayne Mansfield in it,as I did with "Las Vegas Hillbillies", "The Fat Spy" and "Single Room Furnished".

Maybe this one was Jayne's last great film. Like Marilyn's "The Misfits".

Would definitely watch it again.

Not a waste of time at all. Definitely worth seeing.

I've just seen this! It was oddly compelling. My partner gave up on it in the first half hour, but I just HAD to see it all of the way through! As others have said, it's about three thieves on the run after stealing money that was to be sent back to the USA for destruction. What a strange yet wonderful film. It was obviously made towards the end of Jayne's career, as her star was falling...but she acts as if she was still on the A-List! But it's bottom of the barrel-ness makes it (and her performance) all the more interesting!

The movie starts off slowly, but once the thieves make an open sea break for it (with hostage in tow) and end up on a kooky island estate run by a demented older woman, things really shift gears and it becomes very (unintentionally) avant garde!

In this movie you get a way-past-her-prime Jayne doing her own thing (she truly seems to be in her own world while chaos reigns around her), an older woman with a few screws loose, a mysterious killer offing everyone one by one, Cameron Mitchell who never takes the time to wash off the blood and grime that is all over his face, a balding, monocled butler who looks like he's from a 2nd rate (3rd rate?) touring company of "SUNSET BOULEVARD", and did I mention Jayne? See Jayne dance! See Jayne in a cat fight! See Jayne roll around in her undies on a bed full of money! See Jayne in constant heat! See a hefty Jayne run wild on a strange island in nothing but a feather trimmed negligee, a black eye, and extremely bad hair! Just so strange! WOW!

I got this movie on a cheapy double bill (the mind-numbingly awful "SHE DEMONS" is the second feature) DVD. I sought it out just for "DOG EAT DOG", and I was NOT let down (the DVD was ultra cheap anyway...). I just wish someone out there would RESTORE this movie. It's wild and I think it could develop a cult following! NOT for everyone--but take a chance!

What we have here, if you can believe it, is a chimera of film noir, early Russ Meyer, and a Ten Little Indians adaptation.

The plot is verging on parody in its simplicity. Two crooks and a floozy (Jayne Mansfield), somewhere in the eastern Med, steal a million dollars (yes a million dollars exactly!) from a navy vessel transporting used $1000(?!) bills to be destroyed. The robbery isn't shown, which is all to the good really, as I don't really think there was a Peckinpah type amongst the four guys apparently at the helm. In point of fact though it's never the robbery that's interesting is it? That's why I hate heist movies that concentrate on the plan and the safe-cracking, the interesting bit is always the squabbling over the loot.

The crooks end up on a sailing boat on the way to a deserted island which houses a disused palatial brothel. They pick up a couple of greedy stragglers on the way (the eavesdropping hotelier Livio and his incest-fixated yet frigid sister). On the island a motor boat has been stashed somewhere for the getaway, but Corbett (the crook who has the gun) doesn't know where it is, nor where the petrol is hidden.

Anyway the brothel has a woman and her manservant in residence, these two they broke the mould after making. The manservant is a cod-philosopher gypsy-talking henchman type, whilst the woman is an elderly ex-madame who has returned to the island "in order to die". She thinks she is the Empress of the island and is always talking about the Emperor, whoever that might be, she is mentally fragile to say the least.

It becomes a Ten Little Indians style mêlée after the cash goes missing. People are dropping like flies, and we don't know why. Corbett sums up the mood perfectly: "Where da party at? No dough, enough stiffs for a graveyard, no way out, nobody knows who's next and nobody knows who's doin' it" It's a nice movie to look at because it's set on an Aegean island, with a pretty mansion, fluted columns, palm trees, flora, sunshine. There's a lot of luridness here too. Jayne Mansfield's nymphomaniac character Darlene can't seem to stop mentioning that she wants a fresh pair of panties, that she is on her last pair. There's jazz music all the way through, just so we know we're at a party.

One user described this movie as unintentionally avant-garde, well I'd go along with that. This is the stuff that cults are made of. You wont believe the ending by and by.

Am I the only one more excited about the presence of Dodie Heath than Jayne Mansfield?