Monster Dog (1984)

Returning to his ancestral home, a rock star and his band attempting to shoot a new music video in his old family home finds the locals' superstition about werewolves might be real and struggles to protect them from a rampaging beast in the area.This here wasn't all that bad and really had some rather enjoyable elements about it. One of the better features here is the fact that this one manages to get quite a lot of work out of actually implying he is the beast or not, which gives this one the majority of its positive points. By throwing out the family legacy early on and tying him into his father's fate as being a werewolf they all tracked down and killed, it starts off the underlying thread of whether he's truly become one as well which is furthered nicely with their own experiences around the house which makes for a great continuation here with the dream sequences and the story about what happened to him as a child that really sells this nicely. Likewise, the continual encounters with the bleeding and dazed villager bring along plenty of rather exciting confrontations here that are also quite important at pulling the thread of whether or not he's actually the creature of legend feared by the town, and there's a great bit of tension added as well with his constant appearances. That really changes in the finale as there's the supreme fun of the locals appearing to track him down at the castle, the charmingly cheesy hostage situation and the resulting shootouts in the upper halls of the castle-like house make for a grand time before it finally puts the werewolf center-stage with an astounding series of interactions with the others as it controls the neighborhood dogs to attack one minute and be calm the next, charging into the fight itself and managing plenty of great stalking set-pieces and finally utilizing the final rush to get away from the house that really ends this one on a positive note here. Coupled with the strong werewolf look and some pretty gruesome kills, there's enough here to hold this one off against the flaws to be rather enjoyable. The main flaw here tends to be the way this one feels so overtly from its time period that it does become distracting more than anything, mainly in the fact that the backing lighting here gives so many scenes a luminous blue light that's more akin to a music video from that decade than any kind of realistic situation would allow. It looks cheesy, destroys the atmosphere the present action is trying to establish and is featured so often it becomes overkill when it really didn't need it. As well, there's also the quick running time here that allows this one to race through quite quickly and really could've been expanded just a touch as the early attacks by the beast really could've been given a little more here to really expand the action much more throughout here in this section while also giving this a little bit more of a running time. While the great werewolf look does come at the expense of realism as it's quite obviously a prop-head only created for the inserts of it in the scenes, it's not as detrimental as the other flaws here that are a little more obviously flaws that bring this down.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

Absolutely one of the worse films ever made. A slice of Italian garbage. So cheap no audio was recorded during the filming, like in the silent days, then added after editing. And someone else dubs Cooper's voice to boot! And there he is, the "Star" of the movie, the Iconic Alice Cooper himself, filmed in 1984, just after Cooper was released by Warner Brothers Records for his run of "blackout" albums, {the ones he was so drunk, and stoned on Cocaine he can't remember recording them} as well as yet another stint in rehab. No band, no tours, so why not subject yourself to making a "C" rated horror flick, that lacked any horror, or even anything associated with competent acting, directing, or dialog. So what we get is Cooper sleepwalking through this pile of feces, all with an expression on his face, that seemingly says.."God, how I hate my life"!

Reputation alone this should be a stinker, even with the presence of rock singer Alice Cooper and the video case artwork being quite striking. Anyhow I went in expecting just that, and sure enough it's low-barrel straight-to-video schlock, which I actually didn't mind. This shoestring Spanish werewolf horror production feels like nothing more than a Cooper vehicle, especially with the time spent on him in some music video clips ( for two previously unreleased songs entitled, "Identity Crisis" and "See Me In The Mirror."). Yep that's right; he plays a popular musician (Hell at least he's true to character!) who returns back home to shoot a music video clip, but the town is plagued by murders caused by stray dogs, or something much worse. The concept isn't too bad, but the leaden script and muddled story dispatches any chance of demonstrating some quality with cheesy daftness, padded stretches and senselessly prolonged plot inclusions. Instead on relishing in suspense, and build up (despite some minor tension and sudden twist near the end) director Claudio Fragasso goes for nightmarish moodiness, as a smoky, darkly lit atmosphere of fog, and light filtering engraves itself into the forebodingly isolated location. There's no better place to stage these things than in rundown, shadowy mansions. Although it works, the direction comes off clunky, and uneven. An eerie, stinging music score splices up well with the on-screen atmosphere, while the soundtrack is an unshakable winner. Now the special effects… yeah they're hokey. However there's a terrific head explosion and plenty of blood splatter, but when it came to the beast's make-up. It's shonky. Even the dogs in picture look bewildered when the werewolf finally makes its grand appearance. The transformation sequence is wickedly cheap, but amusing. The acting is downright disposable and flaky, but Cooper's comfortably sound turn holds your interest and the ravishing Victoria Vera is tolerable.

Yours truly is one of them sour people who's incredibly annoyed by the trend of inexperienced singers (mostly hip-hop & pop stars) getting lead roles in films just because they're immensely popular among teenage audiences. Although this mainly happens nowadays, lame directors have apparently always been recruiting music idols to make their insignificant movies look a little more appealing. No one less than shock-rocker Alice Cooper is the main attraction of this terribly inept yet hilariously amusing werewolf-vehicle, directed by the same guy who brought us the legendary bad flick "Troll 2". "Monster Dog" is not much better than "Troll 2", though. It's poorly scripted, unimaginably cheesy and almost half of the film is pure padding since there wasn't enough material to fill up a whole screenplay. Cooper's music video for "Identity Crisis" is repeated not once but twice, and there's another entire clip in the middle section of the movie. Alice Cooper stars as – surprise – a successful artist who takes his whole entourage with him for a trip to the region where he grew up in order to shoot a new music video. The sinister place brings back traumatic memories, however, as superstitious locals lynched Vince's father because they thought he was a werewolf. When mutilated corpses are discovered once again, the locals believe Vince is a werewolf too and begin to hunt down the entire group. Don't even consider watching "Monster Dog" in case you have little tolerance for lousy acting and horrible dubbing jobs. The dialogs are all irritatingly monotonous and entire cast is wooden as hell. Our good pal Claudio Fragasso (Clyde Anderson) doesn't even attempt to build up a suspenseful atmosphere, but at least there's some blood and delightfully phony werewolf-mutations to enjoy. The make-up effects are laughable and about the opposite of shocking, but hey, at least they provide the movie with a handful of memorable shlock-sequences, like the shotgun-head kill. Some of the interior settings as well as the fog-enshrouded landscapes look effectively eerie, but they're largely ignored in favor of the hip music sequences. "Monster Dog" is recommended to either fans of brainless & campy 80's horror, or die-hard admirers of Alice Cooper. This last group is probably responsible for the rather big number of 10/10 ratings.