Rottweiler

Brian Yuzna's directorial career started off well with the innovative and freaky Society, followed by a serviceable sequel to Re-animator and the excellent Return of the Living Dead III; but since setting up his own production company, Fantastic Factory, in Spain, Yuzna's output has been surprisingly bad, with Rottweiler being the biggest dog of them all.

Set in the near future, the film sees a risk-taking young couple, Dante and Ula (William Miller and Irene Montalà) caught by the authorities as they play a game called 'infiltration', which calls for them to try and illegally enter a country without papers. Dante is sent to a high security prison, but is soon presented with an opportunity to escape into the surrounding wilderness, where he finds himself relentlessly pursued by a savage, cyborg tracker dog.

Admittedly, the above synopsis sounds like it could shape up to be a quality piece of sci-fi/horror entertainment—kinda like Westworld crossed with Cujo—but that is only half the story, and how the plot develops after Dante's prison break is simply insane.

However, since the sheer unpredictability of the narrative is the one of the only enjoyable aspects of the film (the other main 'positive' being the gore), I'm not going to spoil things by revealing too much, suffice to say that you should prepare yourself for some unbelievably poorly executed action, including a silly chase sequence involving numerous shots of Dante's naked ass, the least harrowing rape scene in movie history, the hilarious sight of the dog disposing of a gun (twice), and a priceless shot of a surprised chicken that is easily the best moment in the whole damn mess (the bird certainly gives a more convincing performance than the rest of the cast).

'Relatively speaking' means in comparison to all of the films he's directed. Yuzna is not a seminal horror film director but he does have a certain style and following, and is not merely a hack. For example, a few of his films can stand up with seminal horror directors such as Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, and George Romero, and ROTTWEILER is one that can.

It's not a straight-out, routinely linear-plotted opus, but rather asks the viewer to follow a storyline that jumps through past and present. There is a purpose for this, that mostly being to maintain an intrigue about how the events leading to the chase of the bionic rottweiler and the hunted man came to be, and how the rottweiler itself became a killing machine.

There are also plot points that need the viewer to exercise some mental abilities to follow, and in doing so reward the viewer with a more inclusive experience rather than that of being a 'couch potato' merely as a recipient of programmed emotional effects. These are the folks who complained that they couldn't understand what was going on.

As a point of example for this, it's shown in subtle ways that the bionic rottweiler tracks the hunted man by his scent and the scent of his blood. Anyone who gets this scent on them becomes a victim as well, or if they are between the dog and the man. Those who are not do not get attacked. But the viewers who are looking only for simple plot devices and completely explained maneuvers won't get these subtleties.

This is Yuzna's most interesting horror film to date and the most enjoyable for me, and as I feel it is his best so far, I've called it his masterpiece. Plus it does have the gore that we've come to expect from him.

The plot synopsis of this film does not actually match the film. The narrative is all jumbled around in time and loaded down with long post dubbed dialog. Any excitement is lost in confusing flashbacks and the mentioned long long sequence of the "on the run" male lead trotting around naked.

Brian Yuzna knows how to assemble the elements to make a horror film but when he directs himself he has showed before and shows again he doesn't know how to do much with those elements. There is also the odd misplaced sexual perverse element that stops the movie dead in it's tracks, this time that is the silly nude hero sequence.

Paul Naschy, Spainish horror icon actor, doesn't have much to do here, but the overall level of professionalism doesn't make his appearance the embarrassment that his two recent made in America films were. Then again his own Rojo Sangre makes this film look even worse.

Behind the scenes footage reveals many better angles than Yuzna chose to use. Also the director of photography says he likes to use lots of big lights. This certainly shows in the film, one sequence early one looks like it was shot during the day time but then proves to be a night scene. This is only the beginning of the confusion this movie generates.

Can't they make a straight forward chase/horror film? Well whatever they are trying to make here they couldn't make that film either.

FX are pretty bad overall, dog's robo makeup mostly looks silly as do the various puppet dogs and CG Terminator rip off dog. Much of the movie is devoted to padded dialog scenes. Only visual touches that work are a couple of nice crane shots, one right near the end of the film.

Sometimes the film is bad/funny but not enough of the time to overcome the boredom and confusion of the flashback structure and stiff re-dubbed actors. The reaction shot of the chicken though is fabulous. That chicken could teach the rest of the cast a thing or two about acting. All in all a loser in all ways. The film was nearly booed off the screen when it premiered at the Belguim horror festival.

Spain's Fantastic Factory strikes again with this Brian Yuzna (Beyond Reanimator) directed hokum. Dante and Ula are playing infiltration (apparently a rich boy's game of sneaking into third world countries) and when it goes horribly wrong they are caught by the authorities and separated. When Dante makes a daring escape and then finds himself being hunted by the titular title character which is now more Terminator than dog. It eats everything. It destroys everything and it can't be stopped. How will poor Dante find his beloved Ula with the Doginator on his trail? Well where shall I begin? The script is pretty ratty even for low budget fare. Giant leaps in logic and plot inconsistencies are plenty in this tale. Unnecessary flashback sequences try to unlock or more correctly infer a twist in the ending but it fails to generate anything to sustain you that far. Things just don't jell in the end. The acting by the no name cast of Spanish actors is pretty straight as one would guess with a script that requires the lead to get attacked, shoot a shotgun, have sex with the local bimbette (while she holds a gun on him no less) and wander the desert starkers for 25 minutes you can't expect much and you end up rooting for the dog. The dog effects however are the only bright spot of the film as the kills can be pretty bloody and cool and the animatronic dog was actually pretty spiffy. Heck, the dog gives the only worthy performance here.

It's quite hard to talk about a movie such as this without insulting someone or without swearing. I think that the guys at IMDb should reconsider their position about that, because if we could use certain (forbidden) words these comments would be much easier to write.

OK, here we go: a man escapes from a prison and he's pursued by a dog... hell yeah! Well Brian Yuzna is not only a dreadful director, he's also so slapdash (the lack of money is not an excuse), and he's learned nothing throughout all those years he's been in the industry. He does not have the faintest idea about cinema, he can't narrate, and he makes a mistake after another.

PS: the funniest thing about "Rottweiler" is that it was made with the money of some Spanish public institutions. So, now we not only subsidize the local rubbish but also the foreign one.

*My rate: 0/10