Les chiens enragés

It is ironic that Mario Bava, master of Italian fantasy, should make a gritty, realistic thriller as his last film. Gone are the atmospheric lighting that made films as Lisa and the Devil and Kill, Baby, Kill! so unforgettable. The claustrophobic scenes in the getaway car are expertly handled. The increasing hysteria of the gangsters and the anxiety and despair of the kidnapped woman are, in true Italian fashion, slightly over the top. It works, though. Bava never loses his grip on the situation and one is kept on tenterhooks throughout. This, then, is classic 70's low budget filmmaking and it is a shame we had to wait for more than 20 years to finally see it. Rabid Dogs is up there with Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour and Ida Lupîno's The Hitch-Hiker as one of the best examples of this exciting subgenre.

After the heist of the payment of the employees of a chemical industry where the treasurer and a security guard are murdered, the driver of the runaway car of the criminals Dottore (Maurice Poli), Bisturi (Don Backy) and Trentadue (Luigi Montefiori) is shot and a bullet hits the gas tank. The car runs out of gas and the trio is forced to run to the parking lot of a mall where they kill one woman and kidnap her friend Maria (Lea Lander) and use her car to escape from the police. They are chased by the police but they carjack the car of the middle-aged Riccardo (Riccardo Cucciolla), who is driving his unconscious ill son to the hospital for an emergency surgery. They force the calm RIccardo to drive them out of the city using secondary roads to escape from the blocks in the highway. During the trip, the tension increases but Riccardo and Dottore manage to control the situation until an unexpected conclusion.

"Rabid Dogs" is a masterpiece of tension and suspense by Mario Bava. The immediate association that I made was with the famous Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" that is visibly inspired in this movie, but less realistic and tense. This is the first time that I have seen "Rabid Dogs" and the dialogs and situations are still very impressive; imagine thirty-five years ago the impact of this movie. The claustrophobic location inside a car where most of this feature was shot transmits the horror of Maria with the cruelty and sadism of Bisturi (that means scalpel and not blade) and Trentadue. The final twist is totally unexpected but makes a perfect sense to the plot. Now I intend to see the restored version "Kidnapped" also available on the DVD. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Cães Raivosos" ("Rabid Dogs")

Note: on 19 June 2020 I saw this film again.

In only the first half hour, Rabid Dogs has more tension and psychological insight into the criminal mind than all of Reservoir Dogs making Tarrantino look like an amateur. Even Scorese has admitted the influence of Bava, this movie has Mean Streets starting to look pale in comparison. The master cinematography, confined setting, brilliant camera angles, and editing brings to mind some of Orson Welles best laid out scenes. This all presides over a backdrop of overwhelming despair abundant in nihilism which begs yet another comparison to another admitted admirer, David Lynch, who looks like a student to the teacher - the breadth of brechtian super realism truly achieves it peak, of which an entire generation of filmmakers have aspired to, including Fellini - all of whom had never had the chance to see the film until the late nineties. The movie crashes through the fourth wall and the viewer becomes a passenger in this unfortunate circumstance. The film is a tribute to the genius of Mario Bava and in a way the culmination of all his talent and influence neatly compacted into a ninety minute film school. One of the finest crime dramas ever made. The intricate dialog which illustrates a pure hatred of life and total lack of respect of all that is good - even makes one start to question if Coppola missed the boat with the Godfather a little bit in making his characters a little too heroic and romantic, rather than the base individuals they are supposed to portray. One comes from this film with a horror of the criminal rather than a wish to emulate. In this real time robbery, murder and car-jacking, Bava takes us to the precipice, the edge of reason and finally beyond all semblance of humanity.

The master of Italian Horror, Mario Bava, makes a heist film that is equal parts violent, ironic and vulgar, most of which takes place in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small car. Three robbers shot their way out of a police blockade by taking a woman hostage. They soon hijack a small automobile with a man and a sick child. Tension builds as power plays amid the crooks and escape attempts by the hostages lead to a violent conclusion which is both unexpected and ironic. Ranks with Dog Day Afternoon and Reservoir Dogs as a unique and disturbing heist film, with several scenes designed to make you squirm. A must for fans of both Bava and the genre.

There's a long troubled history behind this one, about how it wasn't released until 1996 due to legal problems with the financiers and such like, but the saddest thing is how the world let Mario Bava slip through its fingers as a master filmmaker. How could Alfredo Breschia make five films in 1979, yet Bava had to fire his cinematographer just so he could afford to make this film?

Let's get to the film: Four nasty armed gunmen violently rob a firm of it's wages and during the getaway their driver is killed and car immobilised. After a stand-off with the police that results in a woman being stabbed in the neck, our three remaining bad guys grab another woman for a hostage and in a hurry jump into a car containing a sick child and his father. Get used to the inside of this car because about two thirds of the film takes place in it.

We also get to know our bad guys a bit more. There's the calm, intelligent Doc (Maurice Poli), the not-calm, violent Blade, and the really not-calm psycho and potential rapist Thirty-Two (George Eastman). They want to get out of town avoiding all roadblocks, whereas the man just wants them to leave him and the kid alone. The woman, understandably, is terrified, especially of Thirty-Two and his not-too-subtle sexual innuendo.

You can't write much about a plot like this without spoiling stuff, but needless to say its a horrific road trip full of anger and tension. Don't expect Bava's colour schemes here though, because he plays things one hundred percent legit, letting the sweaty actors scream at each other to keep the mood anxious and unpredictable. The tone is relentlessly nasty throughout. Riccardo Cuicolla is as good as he was in The Case Is Closed: Forget About It, and a good choice to play the man who just wants to protect the sick child he has with him.

This is Bava mind you, so don't think thing play out the way you think they will. After this he only made the creepy Shock, and I've read that film was mostly completed by his son Lamberto. With the right money and recognition, what else could the man have achieved?