The Pack (1977)

A pack of vicious dogs who have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves by visiting vacationers terrorize the residents on a small island. Writer/director Robert Clouse relates the gripping story at a brisk pace, generates plenty of tension, stages the canine attack set pieces with skill and flair, and even makes a provocative central statement about mankind's callousness towards and negligence of other animals that we share this planet with. The capable acting by the sturdy cast keeps this picture humming, with especially praiseworthy contributions from Joe Don Baker as tough take-charge marine biologist Jerry, Hope Alexander-Willis as sweet school teacher Millie, Richard B. Schull as jolly lodge owner Hardiman, R.G. Armstrong as the crusty Cobb, Delores V. Smith Jr. as blind hermit McMinnimee, and Paul F. Wilson as pathetic wimp Tommy Dodge. Sherry E. DeBoer supplies some tasty eye candy as sexy secretary Lois. The remote island setting conveys a strong and unsettling sense of isolation and vulnerability while the dogs are quite ferocious and frightening. Ralph Woolsey's crisp cinematography provides an appropriately moody look. Lee Holdridge's robust score does the rousing trick. Well worth seeing.

On a small tourist island, a handful of people is besieged by a pack of wild dogs. What may at first appear to be a TV movie is actually an R-rated bloodfest, as the hungry canines tear into the folks and rack up an impressive body count. The movie has its share of scary moments, and is surprisingly exciting with carefully choreographed sequences of man versus beast. There is no hesitation on veteran action director Robert Clouse's part to show the dogs being killed in equal measure. One great scene has the hero mowing down several of the pack with his truck. Great musical score to boot. Joe Don Baker stars, and several familiar faces, among them Richard Schull, Bibe Besch and R.G. Armstrong, provide strong support. A must-see for action horror fans. Considering the film was made in the 1970s, it feels like it was shot yesterday.

After the cheap 'n' cheerful sci-fi movies of the '50s which sometimes featured mutant animals, the animals-on-the-rampage genre was promoted into an art form when Alfred Hitchcock scared us all half to death with his horrifying "The Birds". In the years that followed, we had killer sharks (Jaws); killer bees (The Swarm); killer whales (Orca); killer ants (Phase IV); killer amphibians (Frogs); and, believe it or not, killer rabbits (Night Of The Lepus). The Pack, released in 1977 with a cast of solid but not-all-that-well-known actors, is the inevitable killer dogs variation of the theme. When I sat down to watch the film, I expected little from it. Surprisingly, the film proved to be very well-made, with lots of excitement and some skillfully edited dog attacks, plus an unexpected injection of humour (sample: R.G Armstrong has a hilarious line, commenting upon the disappearance of an overweight tourist: "if he had any sense, he'd climb a tree. That is if he can get his fat ass off the ground!")Marine biologist Jerry (Joe Don Baker) has been working on a remote island called Seal Island, where he has begun to build a house for himself, his girlfriend Millie (Hope Alexander-Willis), and their children from previous marriages. Seal Island has a fairly steady summer tourist trade, but once the holiday season is over the only folks left around are its handful of permanent residents. This year, a small party of bankers also stick around after the summer season for a little extra fishing and recreation. Things get awkward for the holiday-makers and the residents when they learn that a pack of dogs - mostly pets abandoned by tourists at the end of the season - are roaming the island. Starving and rabid, the dogs have started to target people as their likeliest possible food source. One by one, the people on Seal Island are hunted by the bloodthirsty canines and torn apart, leading the survivors to barricade themselves inside a building where they attempt to survive until the arrival of the weekly ferry.Writer-director Robert Clouse (of Enter the Dragon fame) has fashioned a genuinely exciting story here. It's predictably plotted, yes, but Clouse quickly disguises the fact that this is an old, old story by introducing a clutch of refreshingly oddball characters and building an ever-present undercurrent of suspense. Because the cast is relatively unknown, it becomes hard to guess who will live and who will die (more than once characters you don't expect to get killed do just that, while characters who you're sure are about to be devoured unexpectedly survive). The dog attack sequences are very well handled and seem realistic, which adds to the film's excitement (in films like Nightwing, the animal attacks looked too fake, too funny, to be frightening... but not so in The Pack!) If you're searching for a rampaging animal movie that is actually good, then look no further.

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*This movie has a problem. Dogs, by themselves, are not scary. Sure if some weird serum gets injected into them or they are bitten by a rabid bat they can be ferocious. But these dogs look like they came out of a dog food commercial. There's one scene where the dogs are chasing after the humans in slow motion and all I could think of was that they were running for dinner time. "I want my kibbles and bits and bits and bits..."They had one dog who could make a scary face but that was it. He could pull his lips back and show his teeth but the other dogs just stood around with that vacant, happy dog look. They didn't inspire fear.The ending is what takes it over the top. Humans and dogs reconciling to live in peace. "Shake boy. Good doggie." Blah.