455 White Dog

[Cronenfly]

I just read a couple of White reviews to see what all the noise was about and...wow. He must be playing a prank right? It's not even that his liking of films is bad. They're okay if conservative I suppose, but what he criticizes is so asinine that he must be joking. It's almost beyond words.

No offense, but can of worms already opened and closed.

[domino harvey]

As long as there is an Armond White, it will never be closed

[knives]

Yeah, I was curious what the problem was and this was the closest to a relevant thread I was aware of.

[LQ]

Quite an enjoyable 90 minutes were passed last night with this one. The film kind of clocks you upside the head, everything about it is pretty heavy-handed...the anti-racist message, the attack scenes, the dialogue, the ending... but it was great, pulpy fun. Classic Fuller. Gringotex has an excellent suggestion though; watching it last night with the bf was great, but it would be even better suited to entertain with a bunch of semi-drunk pals in attendance.

and um, dogs are terrifying.

[Max von Mayerling]

Watched this last night. I recommend the video interviews special feature - I thought it was a pretty informative.

[mfunk9786]

Watched this with LQ the other night - just getting a chance to weigh in. One of my favorite releases of the year, and I wish there was a commentary more than ever having finally seen it. What a heartbreaking but perfectly campy little movie. Fuller's style is as infectious as ever and as bizarre as it may sound to say this, Paul Winfield was born to play this part.

[Michael]

Love this film too. Finally we have beautiful "slow-burn" shots of Kristy!

Spoiler

Here in this film, what's even more tragic than racism and human killings is the dog's suffering, abuse and ultimate demise. I guess I like animals more than humans.

[Napier]

Thanks for the spoilers Michael! #-o I just got this today and was going to watch it tonight.I love me some Fuller.

[Michael]

Sorry about that. Napier, can you remove the quote?

But still even with that spoiler, I think it's very predictable.

[Napier]

White Dog predictable,maybe,I haven't seen it yet.But I have to say I NEVER imagined the ending for the Naked Kiss.

[jbeall]

Good flick, and I have to say that I even liked White's essay in the booklet (in which he behaves himself).

It's a little noticeable when a different canine actor is playing the dog, and the dialogue is ham-handed as anything Fuller's done, but the dog(s) can be legitimately terrifying and Paul Winfield is excellent as Keys, esp. with the dialogue he's given. Finally, I liked

Spoiler

the confrontation between Julie and the dog's original owner. That she actually yells at him, instead of merely being taken aback at how kindly he appears, made me like her character a bit more. I imagine more recent films would just have her leave quietly with ominous music as the camera zooms in on gramp's face.

[Magic Hate Ball]

I really loved that scene. The cinematography and editing were flawless and it really pulled the tension to nearly breaking point. Usually an outburst like that can seem sort of silly (Julianne Moore in Magnolia, "How dare you!"), but it's executed very well here. I kind of wish there had been more follow-up to the character, but I'm actually sort of glad it was just the one scene. I think it's the best scene in the film.

[kaujot]

I enjoyed the film. My first full-Fuller. Quite an introduction.

It took me a bit to get into Fuller's direction, but once he had me, he had me for good. And a great Morricone score to boot.

[HerrSchreck]

Do yourself a big favor and get into Fuller in his prime and at his best-- South Street, Shock C. & The Naked Kiss. Much better than White Dog imho. I'd probably even go with the Eclipse tites over it.

[oldsheperd]

Yeah definitely check out more Fuller if you get the chance but remember I think it's on the 'upcoming' thread, Tamara pretty much confirmed to me that Shock and Naked Kiss will be re-released with better extras, so you may want to rent.

[Via_Chicago]

Do yourself a big favor and get into Fuller in his prime and at his best-- South Street, Shock C. & The Naked Kiss. Much better than White Dog imho. I'd probably even go with the Eclipse tites over it.

I disagree in that I find White Dog to be the perfect distillation of Fuller's particular brand of cinema. Perhaps that's because of the film's relatively modern setting, but many of the quintessential Fuller trademarks are present: "explosive" subject (Fuller even directly alludes to this in his chapter on White Dog in his autobiography titled "Four-legged Timebomb"), dime store novel dialogue, blunt earnestness (the only Fuller that really manages to avoid this earnestness is Underworld USA, which is easily the most cynical movie that the man ever made), borderline hysterical ending, etc. These aspects of the film, so quintessentially Fuller, are largely what put audiences off (or cause snickering and accusations of "camp"). And yet, aren't these the things that make Fuller one of the few directors to truly understand the possibilities of the medium? Its possibilities as a tool of raw, unadulterated power? (for more on this, see Verboten! - there's a scene in which one of the young neo-Nazis is stunned into submission when confronted with the atrocities of the ideology he ostensibly supports).

White Dog isn't simply a guilty pleasure or a campy exercise in pulp fun, but a shocking and sobering reminder of the pervasiveness of racism as a social disease - one that can only be eliminated by way of complete destruction. It is at the very least a much darker and more mature film than it's been given credit for.

As for more Fuller, from what's available in R1, I'd recommend these the most:

- The Steel Helmet
- Fixed Bayonets!
- Pickup on South Street
- I Shot Jesse James
- Forty Guns
- Shock Corridor
- The Naked Kiss

[HistoryProf]

So I had some border's bucks to burn along w/ a 30% off coupon so a $29.99 criterion was the perfect choice, and White Dog was the newest I wanted they had in stock. For some reason I couldn't find it though....computer said it was in stock. Turns out they have classified it as HORROR.

[GringoTex]

Tag Gallagher has another brilliant essay - this one on Sam Fuller and White Dog.

[Michael]

Thanks for posting that, GringoTex. Very fascinating, how it explains the dynamics of men and women in Fuller's universe.

[MoonlitKnight]

The fact that the dog was made this way by

Spoiler

a seemingly nice, kindly old man

makes the whole thing all the more disturbing. From that point on all the way to the end, I couldn't help but feel a sick feeling in my stomach as I watched it.

[Forrest Taft]

The "never-seen rough cut for the unfinished trailer". Optional commentary track by producer Jon Davison.

[HerrSchreck]

Do yourself a big favor and get into Fuller in his prime and at his best-- South Street, Shock C. & The Naked Kiss. Much better than White Dog imho. I'd probably even go with the Eclipse tites over it.

I disagree in that I find White Dog to be the perfect distillation of Fuller's particular brand of cinema. Perhaps that's because of the film's relatively modern setting, but many of the quintessential Fuller trademarks are present: "explosive" subject (Fuller even directly alludes to this in his chapter on White Dog in his autobiography titled "Four-legged Timebomb"), dime store novel dialogue, blunt earnestness (the only Fuller that really manages to avoid this earnestness is Underworld USA, which is easily the most cynical movie that the man ever made), borderline hysterical ending, etc. These aspects of the film, so quintessentially Fuller, are largely what put audiences off (or cause snickering and accusations of "camp"). And yet, aren't these the things that make Fuller one of the few directors to truly understand the possibilities of the medium? Its possibilities as a tool of raw, unadulterated power? (for more on this, see Verboten! - there's a scene in which one of the young neo-Nazis is stunned into submission when confronted with the atrocities of the ideology he ostensibly supports).

White Dog isn't simply a guilty pleasure or a campy exercise in pulp fun, but a shocking and sobering reminder of the pervasiveness of racism as a social disease - one that can only be eliminated by way of complete destruction. It is at the very least a much darker and more mature film than it's been given credit for.

As for more Fuller, from what's available in R1, I'd recommend these the most:

- The Steel Helmet
- Fixed Bayonets!
- Pickup on South Street
- I Shot Jesse James
- Forty Guns
- Shock Corridor
- The Naked Kiss

I wanted to wait until I saw all of this film, all the way through, before taking up a response to your reply.

I understand your reasoning viz your assertion that the film is spangled with elements which make it "quintessentially" Fuller-- I might go so far as to somewhat agree with that assessment... but the fact that the film bears some of these hallmarks (and only cursorily so... I do NOT,as some people do, count bad filmmaking, or campy script/delivery, as "Fulleresque") does not make it a good Fuller film. There are some in your face moments with the dog, and the Ives character, and the feeling of the whole film being on the razor's edge (but sadly, a rare instance of, in this metaphor, it bleeding badly from the razor instead of tightroping thru it's runtime to success), and a certain tone to the dialog.. this is true.

One of the things I love most about Fuller is his need for Big Doses. I read him as a man who has passed certain barriers of experience, of witnessed-event, surpassed the average human existential threshholds whereby Callouses of Perception build up... like hands engaged in high volumes of excess work... a cognitive resistance, a tolerance to existential stimulation... whereby the man as a rule Needed More. He needed more to get his thing on, to get off on life-- he liked big characters, unusual event, color color color! The scratched heads he got from some viewers in the audiecce he no doubt got in his social life. And this Bigness, this color! color! color! is what he spit back out into his movies.

You say that Fuller can be explosive as dynamite-- that's true. Not here though. For me the film suffers from what is-- for almost anyone, I'd imagine-- long stretches of Cinematic Sin Numero Uno: it's boring. And boredom is something that Fuller rarely inflicted upon an audence, because his films were genuine extensions of his audacious personality. He populated his films with guys kind of like him, like guys he'd known or heard of who crack him up or had an affection for. But here in this film, the action & content doesn't seem to spring from his social personality... it springs from his belief in justice, of What's Right, his anger and sense of social responsibility-it sprung en toto from his moral sense. The huge Fuller characters, the lovingly detailed exposition of their eccentrities, and their wild situations, is gone. Fuller is at his best getting his kicks out of giving you your kicks via him Being Wild. It's tempting to equate Fuller at his best with Constance Towers without the wig in the opening of N.Kiss-- a fringe character who works in the fringes of humanity beating you around the room... but I think the most appropriate symbol of his cinematic world is Widmark's shack in Pickup: it's on the fringes, seems simplistic from the outside, is inexpensively made yet contains ingenious inventions and holds hidden contents of great value, is the happy home of a clever operator who isn't at home with-- or neccessarily welcomed by-- the middle class.

The subject matter in White Dog is outside of that home, and treated too deicately and reverentially for those Fuller freaky trademarks-- here clumsily in brief evidence in Ives' character who seems utterly ridiculous save for a few quirky moments-- to truly let fly, and therefore in this sense the film is tame. Compare his treatment of racial injustice in this film to Shock Corridor, or even Steel Helmet-- there his personality is fully engaged with the characters and the narrative. There's a solemnity in White Dog that pops up here & there, almost a preciousness, that is just not Fuller's territory.

One thing Sam had was a tuned-in sense of humor... I strongly believe he knew for the most part when he was cracking people up (and by people I mean people like us who are ready for his films and style for his post-50',s more eccentric films, and everyone back in the Fox days for example); this film is a rare occasion where he fell off the tightrope, and earned chuckles in unwanted places... tragic in a Fuller fim, especially one he clearly made with such earnestness.

It's fun watching McNichol (the Katie Couric of the late-70's/early 80's, I now see) walk around braless, but that's no substitute for the fact that as a character, she is drawn as a nonentity who--in his terms at least-- he puts little effort into rendering. Fuller here seems most concerned with creating intermittent moments of profundity, scenes with metaphors he probably believed would hit like perfect, poignant, hot knives in the American gut-- this is not what Fuller is good at, and never was. Fuller always takes you to whatever social comment he may or may not wish to make via the thruway of his characters and narrative event-unfolding; this deployment of blatant metaphor and symbolism was imho excessively clumsy. My heart throbs for the sincerty of his intent in, say, his metaphor for the Birmingham, Alabama church bombing viz the church killing-- because I see him putting the scene together and imaginng in his mind's eye an audience perfectly devastated (and god knows I welcome the protest of every devastated viewer)-- but this material feels like it's patently in the wrong director's hands. This kind of deadly serious social commentary, with no eclecticism whatsoever (beyond the accidental strangeness wrought by its klunkiness), is, for better or for worse, not his territory and it's all out of joint.

Lastly-- more obviously for most critics I'm sure-- and I wont dwell on it because it's such a soft taget in this film-- the film is filled with narrative holes & other problems of script clumsiness. As a veteran journalist, one thing that Fuller always had an iron grip on was Story. Not even counting the fact that there is virtually no story here, there are many plot holes and weaknesses in the narrative... many times I kept wondering "But how..?", or "When did they...", "But what about...?"

And really, this must be Morricone's worst score. That triplet figure on the piano was driving me batty by the end of the film.

If this were directed by a less celebrated director, it'd be completely forgotten as sub made-for-tv material. And I say this as a man who absolutely adores Fuller-- a true, all-American great, and absolutely and utterly a most distinct One-of-a-Kind.

[aox]

Excellent post.

I saw this film recently, and I hated it. While the subject matter could be interesting (and it is), I have never seen such poor execution from such an established director. This film's 'look', combined with the terrible acting on everyone's part made it basically on par with some of the ABC after school specials or Lifetime films I saw from the 1980s. Even the moral imperative is lost halfway through the film; especially after the church murder when Fuller desperately tries to keep the debate alive about how the dog should remain and be rehabilitated. At that point, I wasn't laughing at the absurdness of the film and its poor execution, but getting angry at moral callousness.

You're right too that the comedy doesn't happen when Fuller wants it too. When the dog jumps through the window at the beginning to get the attacker, I burst into hysterics. If it hadn't been Fuller, I would have shut the movie off right there.

[Props55]

Herr Schreck has cut to the heart of the dramatic contradictions and cross-circuits of this little seen late Fuller and also opened the door to the problems inherent in all his work post the back-to-back double whammy of SHOCK CORRIDOR and THE NAKED KISS. In fact I have increasingly been moving towards the conclusion that Fuller's cinema effectively ended with these two masterpieces.

Now I'm not talking about the man's creativity. He continued to be a volcano of writing, pitching, mentoring (his script doctoring/suggestions on TARGETS has always been mentioned by Bogdanovich as a major part of its success), acting and just plain living for cinema. But the seismic eruptions in world cinema from 1955-65 changed not just traditional Hollywood (no more studio contracts for career directing drones) but also the nature of the independents like Fuller who reacted against these norms. The wall he had been pushing had finally toppled. But the result was a New Hollywood anda new counterculture/underground that effectively marginalized an iconoclast like Fuller as well the less esoteric "Kings of the B's" You either had to dive into the TV meat grinder (Gerd Oswald, Joseph H. Lewis) or align yourself with the new world order and upscale (Don Siegal and MCA). Or retire. Neither Fuller or Budd Boetticher had the temperment for TV nor for the further corporatization the '60s brought so they both floundered in the margins for the rest of their careers.

Both got to make labor-of-love dream projects in THE BIG RED ONE and ARUZZA but at compromised budget/length in the former and loss of health in the latter. I've not seen Fuller's German feature or the Goodis adaptation but anyone who's had to view the mangled corpses that are SHARK! and THE DEADLY TRACKERS can only wonder at the resiliance and capacity for self-renewal of the man. Even Peckinpah and Russell never had to suffer the indignities Fuller dealt with in these projects.

WHITE DOG was therefore greatly anticipated prior to release as a return to form for Fuller - an explosive social subject which seemed bound to expand upon the themes he'd explored with such surgical precision in nominal genre efforts like war, cop and noir films. Of course Paramount dumped it like diseased turd, the mainstream press deparaged it as crude and crass and pro-Fuller critics overpraised it. Most people I know didn't (couldn't!) catch up with it until it hit pay cable and, except for a few who seemed to like it more for what it wanted to accomplish instead of what it actually did, the response was pretty underwhelming. In fact the reaction was pretty much in line with aox's post especially as regards the films visual style (or lack thereof). Somehow a potentially engrossing idea just dissolved in a puddle of fractured plotting, soft images, hazy characters and muddled conflict, compromised less by "safe" choices than by the market demands and audience expectations that were part and parcel of mainstream '80s Hollywood. Fuller was now a man out of his time and he could not create characters to fit the contemporary milieu and culture. At least not any that spoke with the authentic voice and humor that came form the world he knew and that Schreck describes so well.

I particularly like the comparsion of Widmark in PICKUP to Fuller and his cinema. One of the best thumbnail sketches of the man I've yet read.

[HistoryProf]

Excellent post.

I saw this film recently, and I hated it. While the subject matter could be interesting (and it is), I have never seen such poor execution from such an established director. This film's 'look', combined with the terrible acting on everyone's part made it basically on par with some of the ABC after school specials or Lifetime films I saw from the 1980s. Even the moral imperative is lost halfway through the film; especially after the church murder when Fuller desperately tries to keep the debate alive about how the dog should remain and be rehabilitated. At that point, I wasn't laughing at the absurdness of the film and its poor execution, but getting angry at moral callousness.

You're right too that the comedy doesn't happen when Fuller wants it too. When the dog jumps through the window at the beginning to get the attacker, I burst into hysterics. If it hadn't been Fuller, I would have shut the movie off right there.

Really? Hysterics? you rolled on the floor with laughter at the supreme silliness of the dog crashing through the window to get the big bad rapist? Wow....

Sometimes the hyperbole in reactions here is a bit much. I just finished this and really really liked it, for all it's campy flaws it is a fantastic little film. I think Fuller's touch is the perfect antidote to what is at its base a hamfisted tale of American racism - but the terror in the eyes of the men who encountered the dog was truly horrifying...the KNEW what was coming, and knew these animals existed. The scene with the original owner is indeed powerful, but by no means is it the only one. Winfield is fantastic and, dare I say, absolutely believable in his reactions to the challenge he chooses to confront. That in the end the dog proves irredeemable is a rather depressing statement on America's ongoing denial about the constructs of race we have not come close to confronting...but it's also classically Fuller. I think the dismissals here are a bit condescending, and fail to appreciate how Fuller of all people actually managed to infuse this story with some rather profound subtleties in the historicity of the social commentary - you can't understand this dog's existence without confronting the historical forces that created it - forces that are all too evident in the terrified eyes of the beast's victims.

And I hate to say it, but Armond White's essay and his connections to Steel Helmet are actually pretty apt....it's the first thing i've ever read of his that isn't completely worthless attention whoring, so that's something I guess.