Alicia I love this movie so much

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Michael_Elliott Dogs (1976) ** (out of 4)A small community is investigating some bizarre deaths and one man (David McCallum) thinks that it's a pack of dogs. These aren't wild dogs however. No, it is believed that these are a group of pets who have gone crazy for some reason and are now attacking humans.In case you couldn't tell, this is yet another film in the "when nature attacks" genre, which took off after the success of JAWS. That film had a killer shark and overtime we'd have movies with killer bees, whales, grizzly bears, rats, rabbits and various other animals. DOGS isn't the best of the bunch but it's certainly not the worst of the bunch so you're entertainment level will certainly depend on your feelings towards the genre.I've always enjoyed the genre so I can overlook some of the flaws that a film like DOGS has. The biggest problem with the film is the fact that it really doesn't rise above a made-for-TV level. Another problem is that the dogs aren't ever scary and there's certainly no tension to be had in any of the scenes. The highlight of the movie happens when four hunters are surrounded by the dogs during the night but this film should have been milked for some suspense.McCallum is pretty bland in the lead role and no one here jumps off the screen, although fans of Wes Craven's THE HILLS HAVE EYES will enjoy seeing Russ Grieve here in a small part. I will say that the film is rather violent at times and included one really graphic sequence. I'd also argue that the ending isn't exactly what you'd expect. DOGS should have been better but as it is the film manages to be slightly entertaining.

Jonathon Dabell Dogs belongs in that much-maligned sub-genre of nature-strikes-back movies that underwent a boom in the mid-to-late 70s, in the wake of Jaws. Sure, all manner of animals had gone on the rampage at the movies prior to Jaws (does anyone remember, for instance, Night Of The Lepus – a notably awful 1972 movie about killer rabbits?) but thanks to the phenomenal worldwide success of Spielberg's shark opus, films of this ilk seemed to invade cinema screens on a monthly basis over the next few years, each presenting a new animal bent on munching its way through a cast of Hollywood has-beens and never-weres. Dogs is essentially a canine rip-off of Jaws, with plot developments and characters that virtually run parallel in the two films. It throws in a bit of Psycho too, in a scene where the titular creatures tear apart a pre-Dallas Linda Gray as she attempts to taker a shower! Moody, emotionally detached lecturer Harlan Thompson (David McCallum) works a university in a remote corner of the American Southwest. Adjacent to the university is a top secret government research centre, described by a piece of amusingly vague script laziness as an "accelerator plant where 'classified experimentation' is taking place". Whatever is going on at the plant seems to be affecting the local domestic dog population, with large numbers of once-friendly canines turning on their owners and fleeing into the wild to 'pack', after which they return to randomly attack and kill people in the area. University dean Martin Koppelman (Sterling Swanson) stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the danger, leaving Harlan and a rival lecturer, Michael Fitzgerald (George Wyner), to race around like lunatics in search of a way to save the community from the ever-growing pack of killer canines.Burt Brinckerhoff's film is competently shot and suitably bloody, wisely opting to keep the dog attacks off-screen in the early stages, and showing the death throes and gory injuries of the dogs' victims in more gruesome detail as the movie progresses. Plotwise it is extremely derivative, settling for all the standard clichés and characters whilst attempting absolutely nothing fresh or original. McCallum's bizarre beatnik haircut wins the award for most unintentionally scary aspect of the film - the ex-Man From U.N.C.L.E star gets little opportunity to escape the shackles of his Illya Kuryakin persona here, saddled as he is with a character whose gamut of emotions ranges from moodily unsympathetic to downright rude. There isn't really enough suspense in the build-up to the dog attacks either – far too many of the jolts are telegraphed way in advance and simply fail to generate the intended stomach-in-knots terror. At least the actual dog attacks are passably handled in their own snarling, gruesome way, but overall Dogs is something of a woofer.

Coventry I have a giant weakness for those typical "animals-on-a-rampage movies", especially if they were released in the 70's and even more so when the title simply exists of the animal species, like "Grizzly", "The Bees", "Shark!" or – like in this case - "Dogs". That's like saying: this is the type of animal we're dealing with here and you already know it's serious even without adding juicy prefixes like "Wild", "Ravenous" or "Savage". This unjustly obscure and neglected mid-70's gem deserves a little more attention from genre fanatics, if it were only for its absurdly grotesque plot and – especially – for its exhilarating climax. There are numerous creature-features with dogs out there, most are bad ("Mongrel", "Play Dead", "Dogs of Hell") and some are good ("White Dog", "The Pack"), but one thing they all have in common is that they simply featured dogs that were either physically abused or trained to be killers. The fun part about "Dogs" is that the animals' murderous behavior is a result of genetic experiments and therefore mankind's own damn fault! The events take place on a quite and remote university campus, where people's loyal and harmless dogs suddenly turn into aggressive animals and form deadly packs at night. A duo of professors discovers that the government secretly experiments with dogs in the school's laboratory. Based on the group spirit and communication skills of ants through the pheromone chemical, the experiments are intended to accomplish a similar reaction between dogs so that they can be used as effective weapons. The tests are a little too successful, as all dogs in the area are affected and go on a relentless killing spree. "Dogs" starts off slow and boring with too much wannabe intellectual gibberish nobody really cares about and overly extended character drawings of protagonists nobody is really interested in. I began to worry even more when the first couple of dog-attacks were shot in the dark and you could only a bit of groaning and barking. Yet, just when you start to accept the fact "Dogs" is nothing more than a forgettable and lackluster low-budgeter, the script throws all tediousness overboard and goes for sheer entertainment. The last half hour is good cheesy fun with an enormous death toll, grainy make-up effects and unintentionally hilarious situations. One of the professors tries to rescue his love interest while the other desperately attempts to evacuate the campus. Eventually the dogs break into the library – courtesy of the fat nerd who found it necessary to separate from the group in search for snacks – and massacre the entire campus! The climatic bloodbath, together with the tacky freeze-frame ending, made "Dogs" a viewing experience I personally can't be too harsh on. And then I haven't even mentioned Linda Grey shower-sequence! Seek out this bad puppy (pun intended)

EyeAskance The "nature attacks" subgenre of horror had pretty much reached its apogee in '76 when this minor entry hit the drive-in screens, and for what it is, it's not entirely valueless. The story, which is actually rather plausible, denotes a sleepy college town where the pet pooches of local denizens have taken to packing in the night. Initially, cattle are the prey of these abruptly aggressive mongrels, but it's not long before people are attacked, at first alone, then in groups. Science teachers from the college provide the usual explanatory double-talk, and do their best to alert the community to the mounting danger against cliché Mayoral resistance.For a quickie this low on the totem, DOGS/SLAUGHTER has a few effective moments, and stands as a par example of its type. I'd say they could have used MORE of the canines(as there seems to be around a dozen passing off for many more), and a bit more fang-bearing and growling might have added greater threat to the situation at hand(generally, these dogs just scamper about playfully as folks run screaming...only a single oft-shown Doberman is really physically imposing and scary). Still, I found myself taking an unexpected liking to this supplicatory little film, despite its poverty-row provisions and customary B-movie shortcomings. Gotta love the retarded "shocker" ending...*groan*... 4/10