Bullet Points: Man’s Best Friend
Halloween is finally upon us! What does that mean for most of us out here in the real world? We look at more pictures of people dressed up stupid and slutty on social media and wonder “who is throwing a Halloween party for 35 year old’s and how do I get invited?”
Well, allow me to take a little more air out of this “holiday” by reviewing this film from 1993 that will totally piss off all of you dog lovers. I get it, dogs are cute and appear to like you, but they are not your children and you damn sure shouldn’t be driving with them on your lap. Dumbasses….
Synopsis: Reporter Lori Tanner (Ally Sheedy), investigating a story about animal cruelty, gains access to a facility where dogs and cats are the subjects of cruel experiments conducted by Dr. Jarret (Lance Henriksen). After seeing the conditions of the lab, Lori flees the building, but massive escaped dog Max follows her. Lori decides to keep Max as a pet, but the seemingly lovable canine is a genetically altered dog with unusual abilities and psychotic tendencies that set him on a killing spree.
- Awwww: The film opens with a montage of people kicking it with their dogs. They run around, throw frisbees, sniff out drugs, do tricks, and a bunch of other things that make dogs out to be the coolest thing to have around you. Then the clips turn a little more sinister as the dogs are attacking people in various ways and pictures are shown of dogs of war. It’s a pretty cool opening and one that I had totally forgotten about since the last time I watched this movie.
- Snitches get lots of stitches: The lab that Dr. Jarret (Henriksen) works for has been doing all sorts of testing on animals. One of the lab assistants is finally ready to spill the beans on the work that’s being done but Max gets out and eats the hell out of her. Stuff like that can’t get out so it’s covered up and Dr. J continues on with his experiments that are guaranteed to get himself and others killed. It’s kind of what these mad scientist types do.
- Trying to get a little time: So Ally Sheedy, the weird girl from The Breakfast Club, is a journalist who “rescues” Max from his cage in the lab. Lance attempts to chase them down but to no avail. The new family gets home and Max immediately starts swooping in on Fredric Lehne’s girl Ally. Sometimes a guy just needs a little TLC and the new dog won’t let it happen. The neighbor kids buddy up to Max and even take him for a fun bike ride until he meets up with the old lady next doors cat….
- Genetic Hybrid Badass: We learn from the good Dr. Jarret what exactly is going on with Max. He’s a genetic freak of a dog. They somehow spliced together a bunch of different animals; bears, tigers, cheetahs, and for some reason a chameleon. It turns out to just look like a dog but it runs really fast and has a very strong bite. Late in the movie we finally get to see how the chameleon blood works as Max uses his surroundings to his advantage when he hides from his prey. All of this genetic screwery also turned Max into a ticking time bomb. He is constantly medicated so he doesn’t freak out and start killing everyone so it’s only a matter of time before he goes from lovable cat killer to not so lovable person killer.
- Junkyard Nope: It only takes a few “bad dogs” before Ally Sheedy passes Max off to a seemingly nice junkyard owner. We all know how dogs love being chained to radiators and fed cans of chili. It doesn’t long for Max to learn that his new owner is a real piece of shit and it takes even less time before Max turn him into Alpo.
- Marking his territory: In a move that Lance Henriksen should have totally seen coming, the murderous mastiff discovers that along with all of his other traits he has developed the ability to piss acid! It wasn’t enough that he could run like a cheetah and bite like a bear!
- Awwwww: Dr. Jarret finally catches up to Max after he goes full-on psycho-dog. You know that the mailman isn’t safe and that boyfriend that was banging it out with Ally doesn’t stand a chance. Through it all, Henriksen’s Jarret is still trying to tranquilize the dog so he can save his investment but you already know that the outlook isn’t good for Lance. I mean, has he ever survived a single horror/sci-fi movie? But everything ends on a happy note as we see the cute little spawn of Max from that time he raped the Collie next door. Yikes.
The Verdict: Man’s Best Friend was a movie that was watched in my house a lot as a kid. My family always owned dogs and it somehow seemed very entertaining for us that they would want to murder us even after we gave them all that delicious leftover cubed steak. I find that the movie is more weird than I remember it being. There are gruesome killings and then a comedic scene where the dog eats a cat whole. Then the dog kills a few people and it’s followed by a scene with a lovely little song in the background. All in all, I still enjoy watching Man’s Best Friend. It’s probably not better than some of the other killer animal movies out there but how many of them can say that their movie features a dog pissing in a man’s face?
