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Written by Mandroid3000
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THE PLAGUE DOGS*** out of *****Genres
Animation
Dogs
Drama
1982
Directed byMartin Rosen
Written by
Martin Rosen
Voice Cast
John Hurt .... Snitter
Christopher Benjamin .... Rowf
James Bolam .... The Tod
Nigel Hawthorne .... Dr. Robert Boycott
Warren Mitchell .... Tyson/Wag
The escape of two dogs from a medical research facility that lies in the midst of England’s Lake District is the basis of The Plague Dogs. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down (which was also turned into a film directed by Martin Rosen). This film is brutal and depressing, and well animated. But the pace is just a bit too slow, and its message too obvious.
The film opens in the middle of an experiment. Rowf, a Labrador desperately struggles to stay afloat in a tank of water. He gives up, passes out, and sinks to the bottom. But a hook drags him back to the surface. He’s revived, with the scientists noting that he managed to stay above water for longer than the last time.
That night the caretaker accidentally leaves his cage unlatched. His neighbour Snitter, a Fox Terrier, manages to sneak under the fence into Rowf’s cage and they both escape. They make their way through the lab, escape via the incinerator, and reach freedom. The bulk of the film involves their travels around the Lake District, their attempts to get food, and their run-ins with humans and other dogs. They befriend a fox named The Tod, who knows how to survive and helps them, at first because they can help him catch food.
The dogs personalities and fears mirror the experiments done on them. Snitter has had something done to his brain. He remembers having a master, and as the film goes on the operation starts to have more of an effect on him. He starts hallucinating, and believing that he will cause the death of any human that comes near him. Rowf on the other hand has grown distrustful after his repeated ordeals in the water tanks. He doesn’t want anything to do with humans, and doesn’t fully trust The Tod either.
The story from the human side is conveyed via voice-overs while the dogs travel over the country side. This has the advantage of compacting the plot, though it does give that side of the story a rather arbitrary feel. Some of the things the humans do to catch the dogs would seem rather far-fetched without some explanation, though.
The Plague Dogs is a good movie, it’s just not a great one. While this is a meaty topic dramatically, a lot of the writing just doesn’t seem to be that great. At times the dogs intelligence level seems to rise and fall depending on what the plot needs. And often the film seems to wander as aimlessly as the dogs. But, it’s certainly a worthwhile film, at least in terms of the emotional aspect of the anti-vivisection movement. It just isn’t an argument winner (the book may be different, I haven’t read it). While the humans aren’t portrayed as evil, there isn’t a whole lot of explanation of what the experiments were for.
The scientists voice-overs make them sound flippant about the dogs, and the experiments. I’d rather people didn’t have to perform experiments on animals, but the fact that we’re talking about a trade-off between the lives of humans and dogs doesn’t come up here. The Plague Dogs shows a harrowing side of the issue, but in the end what do we learn? That the dogs don’t like being experimented on? No shit.
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