Monster Dog [DVD]

A group of rock 'n rollers end up dead meat when they run across a mutant beast on the road home to their next show, but they soon find out that the monster may actually be walking among them! Alice Cooper leads this awful mess of a monster movie, which can't decide if it is a killer animal flick, a werewolf tale, or a ghost story. Its convenient plot seems like nothing more than a poor excuse to throw Cooper on stage in a few cheesy music video moments. MONSTER DOG'S hand-puppet monster is likewise a laughable joke, but thankfully it is kept shrouded in the fog for the majority of the film. The only shot that is even worth mentioning in the entire picture is a shotgun blast that cleaves a guy's skull in two, but other than that this is a trashy creature-feature out of Spain that can easily be missed.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

If your considering buying this movie it is probably because Alice Cooper is in. The best feature of this movie are the videos of a couple of the songs from his 80-83 years. I haven't seen this in awhile but I believe there were two songs from "Zipper Catches Skin" made into videos for this movie. The movie itself is a low budget South American affair and has been a cause of great embarressment for Alice.

The presence of Alice Cooper is probably the only reason someone might be interested at all in Monster Dog. While viewing it you soon realize the joke's been on you. I've certainly seen worse films than Monster Dog, but this movie could have been alot more fun than it actually is. Director Claudio Fragrasso certainly didn't dazzle most of us with Zombie 4 or his script for Zombie 3, and Monster Dog is yet another example of Claudio's shortcomings in the horror genre. Storywise, it's rather simple-Alice and his crew go to his father's mansion to shoot a rock video. Meanwhile, a pack of wild and muderous dogs is roaming the area. Also, Alice's father was lynched years ago for being a suspected werewolf, so naturally Alice's arrival leads the townfolk to feel he's a werewolf also, and is responsible for the wild dogs. Sounds decent enough, but something's really missing. I don't mind the shoestring budget or the bad acting, but something just doesn't work about it. Since the film's not suspenseful or very interesting, more gore could have saved the film I suppose. Cooper can't really carry the weight of the film himself, but that's not his fault as much as it is the script's. Cooper is one of the major reasons to watch the film however coz you keep asking yourself how the hell he got talked into it. Alice was probably in the lowest point in his career at this time(not in terms of his music, which was excellent, but in terms of his popularity in the US), but still very successful abroad, so the guy wasn't strapped for cash in any way. But sometimes celebrities take odd jobs in other countries for fun or an extra bit of money. Alice did tell me(yeah, I met Alice, how do ya like them apples?) that he was assured that this film wouldn't be seen in America, but only in a few small countries. He realizes himself that the film is bad and has a rather humorous attitude about the film. He also did two songs for the film which are actually quite good(probably the best thing about the movie), but never showed up on any album, but rather on his box set. Plus, his voice is dubbed! That's a distraction, but anyone who knows Italian productions knows that this happens quite a bit considering Italians never shot sound while shooting their films. At it's best, Monster Dog has a few chuckles a potentially good plot, and two cool tunes, which is more than you can say about Zombie 4.