Rabid Dogs

Rabid Dogs (made in 1974; released in 1997)

Review by John Dodd

Director: Mario Bava

Throughout the 1970s, a prolific genre in Italy was the crime film. Some of these were meant to cash in on the success of Dirty Harry. Others focused on criminals and revenge. One of the very best is Rabid Dogs. Out of print for several years, this film is back on DVD in the United States and available through Amazon.com and other retailers.

Rabid Dogs has a simple set up. Four criminals rob the weekend payroll of a pharmaceutical company. After one is killed by the police, the others ditch the getaway car. They steal another belonging to everyman Riccardo (Riccardo Cucciolla). They take him, his young sick son, and a woman off the street named Maria hostage and head for the open road.

The robbers are the usual mix of thugs. Doc (Maurice Poli) the leader is cold, without a conscious, and all business. Thirty-two (Luigi Montefiori, aka George Eastman) is the lustful one, a strong man with a lascivious eye on every young female. That leaves the psycho, Blade (Aldo Caponi), who can kill in a rage and not realize it until the cold body limps lifelessly against his own. Needless to say the hostages are in trouble. Riccardo accepts the situation with a stoic quality but Maria falls into hysterics, which is reasonable considering she has seen a neighbor murdered by Blade and feels the ever watchful eyes of Thirty-two on her. The child sleeps on, not knowing what danger he is in.

Seldom in the ninety-five minute running time does the viewer leave the car or the presence of the sociopath Doc and his two loose cannons. The film simmers in expectation. Will Thirty-two rape Maria? Will the sick child become a liability? Will Blade kill everyone during a dark mood? The film further stirs the pot with a fender bender, a talkative tollbooth attendant, a stranded motorist, and a depleting gas tank, all the while the radio informs the hostages of their captors’ crimes and the futility of the police search. The violence when it does come is both startling and often surreal (a spinning top, insert shots of a pinball game). Stelvo Cipriani’s score further unsettles the viewer.

This is a film that Hitchcock might have made. Like Lifeboat or Rope, the premise and setting is simplicity itself. The film rides on the character dynamics and the growing suspense on what will happen to these unfortunates. Hitchcock might have been turned off by the lurid, more exploitative aspects of the story. Surprisingly, Mario Bava has no such qualms. This is a mean spirited, ugly movie and one that certainly holds interest. The middle section might drag a little but the conclusion is nearly perfect and in keeping with the mood that came before. Rabid Dogs is credited to Mario Bava, the famous Italian horror director whose work in the 1960s are considered masterpieces of colorful, gothic horror. Not a personal favorite, Bava is known for more stylish, less visceral filmmaking (Black Sunday and Kill, Baby. . . Kill!). On the other hand, Mario Bava did make Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Bay of Blood), another grim piece of nastiness. It is Bava’s second best film in my book, second to Rabid Dogs. Fans of crime films, Italian or otherwise, should buy this DVD before it goes out of print again.