Monster Dog

Warning: SPOILERS!!! Rock star Vincent Raven (Alice Cooper) is returning to his boyhood mansion to film a music video for his new song "Identity Chrises" (sp). On the way towards town, Vince and his crew are stopped at a roadblock manned by Sheriff Morrison (Ricardo Palacios), who warns Vince and his crew that a pack of wild dogs are running loose and have killed five people so far. The sheriff also mentions Vince's dead father and something (bad) that happened twenty years ago, but Vince doesn't want to talk about it. As soon as Vince leaves the roadblock, the sheriff and his deputy are attacked and killed by a weird-looking dog. Vince hits a dog with his van and puts it out it's misery with a rock to it's head. An old man (B. Barta Barri) with bloody clothes appears out of nowhere and tells Vince and his crew that they will all be dead shortly. Once they get to the mansion, they find it deserted, but well-stocked with food, booze and a "Welcome Home Vincent" banner across the front doorway. Vince grabs a shotgun and searches the house while Angela (Pepita James) has a nightmare that everyone is dead and Vincent has become a werewolf. Vince's manager and girlfriend, Sandra (Victoria Vera), becomes worried when Vince tells her that he believes werewolves are real and that his father was one. Twenty years ago, the townspeople stabbed his father with pitchforks and burned him alive with gasoline after they caught him eating livestock and people. Is it possible that the curse was passed from father to son? While filming a video for Vince's new tune ("See Me In The Mirror"), the dead body of the mansion's caretaker comes crashing through a window and lands on Angela. As Angela runs out of the house (with Vince in close pursuit), four psychotic hunters invade the mansion and hold everyone prisoner, waiting for Vince to return so they can kill him (they blame his return for the rash of killings). The hunters kill Angela by mistake as she walks through the door and Vince is forced to kill three of the hunters with his shotgun. A pack of dogs invades the mansion, attack the crew and kill the fourth hunter. The werewolf then makes an appearance and begins devouring the rest of the crew. When all that are left are Sandra and Marilou (Maria Jose Sarsa), the question remains: Is Vince the "Monster Dog" or is it someone else? This Spanish/Italian co-production, directed/scripted by Claudio Fragasso (TROLL 2 - 1990) using his "Clyde Anderson" pseudonym, is definitely a product under the influence of the MTV Generation, back when MTV was vital and actually showed music videos. Mixing music video techniques with Gothic atmosphere is a strange brew and sometimes it works. The main problem with this film is that Alice Cooper voice is dubbed (his music videos here are not, though) by someone whose voice is two octaves too low and it severely hampers any scene Cooper is in (which is about 70% of the film). The film doesn't make very much sense, but it does contain a lot of gory bloodshed, including a nasty shot of Vince blowing the top off one hunter's head with a shotgun blast, some bloody dog attacks and lots of mangled bodies. At 84 minutes, the film doesn't overstay it's welcome and some scenes are quite good (some tracking shots inside the house are very foreboding), but the Monster Dog looks like a bad puppet. Besides two original Alice Cooper songs, I'm pretty sure there's also an uncredited song or two by the Alan Parsons Project ("A Dream Within A Dream" and "The Raven"). MONSTER DOG is an interesting failure that is too schizophrenic to succeed. Carlos Aured, the director of HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB (1973), was producer here. Also starring Carlos Santurio, Emilio Linder, Luis Maluenda and Charly Bravo. A Trans World Entertainment VHS Release. Not Rated. UPDATE: Now available on uncut, widescreen Blu-Ray from Scorpion Releasing/Kino Lorber, making it the perfect way to watch this film.

I'm rating 4 stars for the movie, not the DVD version from Substance though. The MGM/Kino DVD recently released is way better, featuring a Widescreen transfer and deleted/extended scenes and a interview with the director Fargasso and his wife about the making of it.The movie is a laugh riot I guess, a B movie made in Spain with Italians directing and writing it and producing it partially. That tries to take place in America and stars the one and only Alice Cooper and they even got him to write and sing two songs for the movie.It's bizarre to say the least. But Cooper had his reasons. And he also apparently thought this movie would never reach the Western market either. Boy was he wrong.Cooper is dubbed over into English by someone else, apparently he didn't care to re-loop things for this movie. Apparently the only thing that is his real voice is the songs he sings during the movie which sound rather crappy due to being just demo versions apparently.The movie is a rather confusing at times werewolf flick about him playing Vincent Raven who is basically Cooper as himself, a rock star. Him and his crew go back to his old hometown to film a video only to find the place terrorized by wild dogs or werewolves. And yes, not spoiling anything but Cooper's going to turn into one.The puppet for the dog is rather dorky looking, not the best they could have gotten and Claudio admits this.Not that I think the guy who directed Troll 2 could have made this better. He admits the final edit of the movie is rather heavily edited by the distributors and producer from his own which ran apparently 20 minutes longer. Which I have to think how much more of this movie was there. I mean 84 minutes is thankfully short, sweet and to the point. Apparently at least 4 minutes of footage got put back into the Japanese release of the movie on VHS. Which is were the extended and deleted scenes come from, some of it actually does give some more background dialogue that might be needed to flesh things out. Others just muddles the narrative even more and probably was removed for a reason.But since that only accounts for 4 minutes of footage missing from a 20 minutes total, well I guess we'll never see that other footage that make this movie better according to Fargasso.The Substance DVD like I said, is bad and was what many had to put up with for years to see this movie. A full screened VHS-taped sourced budget/bootleg version which was probably ripped from the Trans World Entertainment VHS itself.The Kino DVD recently released thankfully remasters and gives this movie a better, widescreen transfer.

I love this movie!The last time I had a chance to watch this was during the 1980's when VHS was all the rage.I remember the print at that time was not too special but this bluray is 100% improvement.Although this is a spanish produced movie and the monster dog of the title is totally unrealistic(obviously owing to budget limitations) there are still a number of cleverly staged scenes with Alice Cooper having his revenge on the villagers who obviously blame him for his father's werewolf tendencies in the past.Victoria Vera (whatever happened to her?) is his long suffering girlfriend and in the plotline she has obviously been supportive to Alice as well as being an attractive female lead.The music videos are pretty good considering Alice was asked by the producer to pen these especially for the film.In all a different werewolf style movie that goes into my collection-pity though it's a Region 1-when VHS was on the go this was never a problem!

I totally love this trashy little movie and was over the moon to see it released on Bluray but the product description didn't specify which region disc it was at the time I purchased it.Unfortunately it is not region free and worse still is not a Europe friendly edition either.You will need an A (USA) machine to play it.What a shame.

Solo entretenida imagen y sonido decente

Excellent

It doesn't work on my dvd player for some reason