| "Arf, arf!" "Look, Dad! Scruffy survived the Martian invasion! Hooray! C’mere, boy!"
Hollywood’s perceived reluctance to let beloved family pets get killed has led to many groans and rolled eyes as lovable mutts hop unscathed from the rubble of a collapsed building, or survive some similar calamity. People can die by the hundreds, but ’lil Bandit will be just fine, because focus groups think that dead pets are a "bummer." After a dog outran an exploding fireball in Independence Day (1996), viewers came to the understandable conclusion that the cinema has a hard and fast rule against doggie mortality.
Not true. Dogs die all the time in the movies. Don’t believe me? Two words – Old. Yeller. Heck, the death of the family’s beloved pooch was the defining moment of the film. If that’s not enough to convince you, there are plenty of other martyred mutts chasing rabbits up in that big farmyard in the sky.
· Payback: Straight Up – The Director’s Cut (1999/2006) – April 10 saw the belated DVD release of this much darker version of the enjoyable crime flick. Viewers may recall that in the original theatrical release of Payback, the dog got shot, but turned up alive and waggy, sporting an Ace bandage at the end of the film. This is just one of the many changes the project went through during the notoriously problematic film shoot. In this newly-released director’s cut, that mutt is dead and gone, along with the flippant voiceover narration, and Mel Gibson’s character doesn’t even get his $70,000 back! This is the film director Brian Helgeland originally had in mind before he left the project over creative differences. Fans of the source novel "The Hunter" by Donald E. Westlake (writing under his pen name Richard Stark) and of the uncompromisingly grim first film version of Point Blank (1967) will be delighted to finally have the chance to see this grittier and truer-to-the-source look into the life of a remorseless career criminal.
· Wonder Boys (2000) – This charming and unclassifiable comedy/drama manages to wring a few quirky laughs out of a dog getting shot. "You could have just pulled him off me!" growls college professor Michael Douglas, as his ashen-faced student Tobey Maguire stands over the dead pooch with a smoking pistol. The mutt is then secreted in the boot of a car, causing the characters to marvel at the trunk’s ability to contain a tuba, a suitcase, a dead dog and a garment bag at the same time. "I wish you hadn’t shot my girlfriend’s dog," mutters Douglas. "Even though Poe and I were not exactly what you’d call simpatico, that’s no reason he should’ve taken two in the chest."
· Rear Window (1954) – Hitchcock’s classic of suspense features a killer who bumps off not only his wife, but a cute little doggy that was showing too much interest in what was buried in the garden. Unable to comprehend why anyone would want to harm her pet, the dog’s owner stands in the square and screeches "Was it because he liked you?!" at the neighbours, who at that point are unaware of the killer’s doings.
· A Fish Called Wanda (1988) – Dog-lover Michael Palin, tasked with the assassination of a little old lady, winds up systematically bumping off her tiny dogs one by one instead. Seldom has canine mortality inspired so much mirth in a film audience.
· Flesh+Blood (1985) – This uneven but electrifying medieval epic from director Paul Verhoeven introduces a startlingly original method of germ warfare to its Dark Ages setting. When a dog succumbs to the bubonic plague, an enterprising hero chops it into doggy cutlets and flings the infected meat over the wall of a besieged castle. Inside, the enemy forces clue into the hero’s plan and burn the contaminated dogmeat, but miss one piece that successfully taints the drinking water. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.
· Teenagers From Outer Space (1959) – This classic bit of ’50s sci-fi cheese opens with a shot of a flying saucer landing. An annoying little dog begins barking at the ominous vessel, only to be immediately vapourized by the emerging spaceman’s ray gun. Take that, yappy! |
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