261 Days of Horror, Day 41: The Breed
Feb. 26th, 2007 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiThe Breed. 2007. Directed by Nicholas Mastandrea. Written by Bob Comte and Peter Worthman. Released by First Look International.
Two pieces of good news here:
First, even before I watched it, I knew that The Breed couldn't be the worst horror flick featuring Michelle Rodriguez, thanks to her appearance in Bloodrayne.
Second, I also knew that this couldn't be the worst horror movie named The Breed, thanks to the 2001 stinker starring Adrian Paul*.
We start with a typical old-school slasher moment, as we meet two disposable victims before heading to the main plot. They're named Jenny and Luke, and they're traveling on Luke's private boat. They've managed to get completely lost, and she's also managed to get completely drunk. They spot an island, and, naturally, they pull up to the curiously abandoned dock. Drunken Jenny wanders around while Luke spends about twenty minutes hitching the boat to the dock. Jenny wanders around, finding a fence, a few paths, but no people. As she wanders, we get glimpses of four-legged creatures running past the camera. Eventually, Jenny hears something that scares her, and starts running away. Just as she assumes she's safe and hides behind a tree, something unseen grabs her legs and drags her through the woods! Luke calls after her, but Jenny keeps getting pulled by the unseen force (and loses a finger or two between camera cuts). Oh noes! There's something nasty on that there island!
We cut to our five heroes. They're a group of college kids who are flying to the island (on a private seaplane) to spend a relaxing weekend. These "kids", played by the likes of Hill Harper, Michelle Rodriguez, and Taryn Manning, all presumably joined the army after high school and/or emulated Zonker Harris, thus explaining why a bunch of late-20s and up folks are still in college. The hosts are pair of bland and largely interchangeable brothers, trust fund kids who own the island and the plane. Rodriguez is the girlfriend of the more studious brother (and had dated the other, it turns out), Manning has a crush on the less studious brother, and Harper is black, the joker of the bunch, and the fifth wheel, so he's pretty much got a horror-movie target painted on him. I could tell you the character names, but they really don't matter.
The next ten minutes are given to drinking, character development (they all like to drink), and watching them go through the trauma of not being able to fix the blender to make margaritas for a whole two minutes (a tragedy they manage to avert by drunkenly replacing a fuse). While drinking on the porch that afternoon, a cute puppy runs up the group, and Manning decides they need to keep him. We get more drinking, but that night, the puppy runs away. Manning and one of the brothers run after it, but Manning gets pounced by an older dog! The dog runs away, but Manning has been bitten. The vet student examines her and gives us all expository information about rabies (they have a week before she'd need shots, it's not likely to be rabid anyway, et cetera).
That night, Michelle Rodriguez is cuddled up in bed with her man, who only now mentions that the other half of the island used to be rented out to a seeing-eye-dog breeder, and that the dogs had to be put down last year because of rabies. Not that this could turn out to be important or anything. We also learn that if the rabid dogs had been released into the wild, they'd have died long ago, which is a relief.
We also see Taryn Manning starting to act weird. That night, she and the other brother make out for a bit, until she gets too rough. The next morning, she's being all cryptic and eating breakfast for about seven**. She also claims to feel fine. The brothers and Harper head into the woods to explore, and the girls go swimming.
When Harper takes a break to fix his camera, he's accosted by dogs. Oh noes! They chase him and eventually he runs into the brothers, who are skeptical.
Until a bloody Luke shows up! Remember Luke from the opening scene? Well, here he is, bloody and carrying a stick, and being all cryptic and telling the kids that the dogs don't want them on the island. He's like a WASPy Scatman Carauthers in The Shining! So, naturally, he dies! As the three friends look on, a dog leaps out of nowhere, taking Luke down a hillbank like Westley and Buttercup in The Princess Bride (you can almost imagine Luke shouting "as you wish" as he falls). As he gets torn apart by a pack of dogs at the bottom, the guys wisely decide to run away. Meanwhile, Manning seems to be psychically aware of the attack.
The boys get back to the cabin just as the girls emerge from swimming in the lake, and they all see the pack of dogs descending on them at the same time. A dog grabs ahold of Rodriguez by the pants, and the dumber brother (who has a bow) proceeds to do the dumbest thing imaginable: He fires at the dog from about forty yards away (even though all indications are that Rodriguez would have gotten away). The next sixty seconds take place in slow-mo, as the arrow slowly creeps through the air as if it were reading up on Zeno's paradox, and the dog slowly looks up, sees the arrow, and lets go. The arrow, after finally deciding that the paradox doesn't have any practical applications in the real world, finally makes to to Rodriguez, nailing her (still in slo-mo) through the calf. The dog runs away to join its buddies, confident that it's caused trouble. Rodriguez screams, and we cut to her inside the cabin, finally free of the slow-motion nightmare that has been the last minute of screentime.
We now get the nastiest moment of the movie, as we see the arrow getting pulled out of Rodriguez's leg. Afterwards, one brother suggests that the dog-breeder might have been creating attack dogs, and that these dogs might have a mutant species of rabies. Amazingly, no one makes a Cujo comment at this point, but Hill Harper does a poor man's imitation of Sam Jackson in Deep Blue Sea, ranting about how they'll stay in the cabin where it's safe, only to be interrupted when a dog leaps through the window at him. Unlike Sam, Hill doesn't buy it here, as the dog goes for Taryn (who seems weirdly mesmerized by it). One brother wrestles the dog to the ground, and the other stabs it to death.
The group gets ready to leave the island, but the dogs are between them and the plane. And worse, the dogs have untied the knots, so the seaplane is drifting away! Turns out the dogs have chewed through the rope! But dogs can't think like that, can they?
Only one brother can pilot the plane, so he swims out to it, only to find that two doggies are sitting on the wing (out of sight from the shore). It's an ambush! He makes it back to shore, and since the dogs are still new to learning warfare tactics, they only send one dog to flank the humans. Harper smacks it in midair with a baseball bat, and the group manages to outrun the rest and make it to the safety of the cabin as the plane drifts away.
Trapped, they assess the situation. No cell phone signal. Manning has a fever. Rodriguez is injured. Their plane is gone. The only hope they have is to get to the other side of the island, to see whatever brought Luke there or to see if the dog-breeding compound has any communications equipment. Fortunately, there's a car in the garage. Unfortunately, the garage is a good fifty feet from the house. And the dogs are still out there (chewing up the body of one of their fallen comrades).
So they come up with one of those plans that only comes up in horror movies. One brother hops on the zip-line that runs from the house to the garage (and which was shown during the assorted drinking scenes), but Rodriguez notes that she's lighter, and even injured, she's more athletic than anyone else there. In a move that's entirely expected, the rig doesn't go the entire length of the line, leaving Rodriguez to dangle about ten feet away, but she's Michelle Rodriguez, dammit, which means she's more than tough enough to shimmy the rest of the way to the garage before the dogs can get to her. As she attempts to start the car, the dogs batter against the front door, and the car does what cars in movies have always done, stalling time and again.
The dogs break into the garage, but she's Michelle Rodriguez, dammit!, which means that she can climb through the sunroof, flip up to the beams, and hide at the top of the garage before getting bitten. Alas, she's on the other side of the roof, away from the zipline. In a scene that borders on the inane, the rest of the group ties a line to an arrow, shoot it to the roof, and Michelle makes it to the zipline just ahead of the puppies bursting onto the roof after her. The brother with the bow even manages to shoot down one of the dogs in the process (somehow not hitting Rodriguez in the leg this time).
Holed up in the cabin the brothers bicker, and tensions mount. It's like Cabin Fever, only without the flesh-eating bacteria (and with slightly less stupid). They argue over the usual stuff (the wannabe vet is the perfect son, living up to his parents' memory, and the other one has always felt insecure), and afterwards, we get a few more character moments (with less booze), and the power blows out. Harper heads down to fix it (since he knows where the fusebox is from earlier).
At this point, I'd like to remind folks that Harper is A) a black man in a horror movie who isn't played by LL Cool J, B) the fifth wheel, C) the joker, and D) the guy going down to the dark basement with only a flashlight. Also, it's been nearly half an hour since anyone died (and Luke barely counts).
Harper heads down, fixes the fuse, and is about to head upstairs when the lights go out again. He goes back, trips over something, and notice that the basement door has a hole in it. Ruh-Roh! Cue Scooby and his buddies, and by the time the other guys get to the basement, the cast is down to four.
The guys barricade the basement as the girls barricade the main cabin door (now under canine siege as well). The puppies overwhelm the heroes, however, so everyone beats a retreat to the attic. Alas, the younger brother gets attacked and bitten during the retreat.
Holed up in the attic, nerves fray for a few moments, until the younger brother finds some records of the dogs which prove that they were experimented on and bred as attack dogs. Turns out their Uncle Frank might be connected to whatever was going on, even though he was supposed to be an animal rights activist. We don't find out anything else because it's time for the characters to do something stupid!
This time, they all head down to the second floor of the house, and barricade the two girls inside a room for safety while the big macho men search for the puppies (with only the bow and arrow as a weapon)***. They explore, realizing that the dogs have marked their territory inside the house, and then head outside to the garage. Somehow, the dogs never attack, and the guys attempt to get the car going when one pushes it and the other pops the clutch. It doesn't quite work, but the car does move downhill on the road. Of course, this causes the pre-vet brother (outside the car) to fall down, upon which the dogs go for him. Oh noes! But he makes it to the car and hops on the roof.
Remember how I said they were going to do something stupid? The brother on the roof has his brother pass the bow up through the skylight, and attempts to shoot from a moving car. If there were an Academy Award for Stupidity, this character would get it. Fortunately, the folks behind the movie aren't quite as stupid, and when the dogs attack the car, moron-boy drops the bow. Oh no! Defenseless against a pack of dogs, instead of having a weapon that can fire one shot infrequently. What will they do?
They do what you or I would do: they shift the car down a steep cliff face, and the clutch pops at the last possible second, thus giving them a working car. They drive up to the house, but the idiots have the car windows open****, and a dog hops in! The pre-vet (in the passenger seat) fights it off for a while, and the other brother drives the car close to a post, knocking the dog off as it smashes into the post.
When they get to the house, Rodriguez tells them that Manning won't come down. Her crush object goes in after her, but she's all dark and broody, and when a dog somehow corners them in the upstairs bedroom, she steps in the way to fight it. As Manning and the puppy duke it out, the brother gets knocked through the window, where he tumbles onto the porch roof and onto the floor. Seconds later, the dog and Manning go flying out the window as well, only to both land on a metal pole on an old playground toy.
The three survivors drive across the island to the dog-training compound. They hop the fence (and, to their credit, are smart enough to leave the car running, so they don't have to worry about it starting up again), and find that the compound looks almost like every deserted scientific compound in every survival horror game. And, as with many survival horror games, it's here that they find the proof that the scientists were genetically redesigning the dogs. They also find the radio, which gets no signal, but they have enough McGuyver-esque knowledge between them to get the power going off batteries. They still can't get the radio going (or their cell phones, even with the towers at the compound), but they do come up with some sort of plan to hook up the disconnected antenna, and the older brother goes to take care of it.
While he does so, the younger brother mopes and makes out with his girlfriend. Needless to say, kissing Michelle Rodriguez gets the old brain juices flowing, and he realizes something: If the dogs were able to get out of the compound to the rest of the island, then surely they have a way to get back inside as well! At which point the audience collectives goes, "duh," although we also have to admit that we'd fake not figuring out the obvious if it meant a chance to make out with Michelle Rodriguez.
Cut to the brother outside, who has A) seen Luke's boat, and B) gotten the tower working. He gives the signal to the folks inside, but when Rodriguez starts the radio, it causes the fusebox to blow, leading to a fire in the basement, and to the poor guy falling off the tower when it sparks up. As he stumbles back to safety, he's attacked by dogs, who have dug under the fence, just like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. As things look hopeless for him, out comes little brother with a baseball bat! So much for his career as a vet!
As the brothers (both of whom have now been bitten, and need mutant rabies shots) take on the puppies, Rodriguez notices the fire. However the outside door is guarded by three dogs. She lures them inside near an open gas line, and when they get close enough, she opens a door with a fire behind it (letting in a backdraft) and tells them to "give Cujo my best." Yes, after 78 minutes, we finally get a reference to Cujo! And then a massive explosion! The dogs attacking the brother back off after this, giving the brothers enough time to share info about the boat, but the canines soon surround the brothers again, and all looks lost until Rodriguez, who has snuck off, busts through the fence in the car and rescues them. She drives the car into the water, and they all swim for Luke's boat, making it to the dock ahead of the canines, and they motor off into the sunset as the puppies wistfully look on.
As the heroes sail into the distance, they open up the boat's cargo hold, only for a dog to jump out and attack them as we fade to credits!
The Breed is certainly a dumb movie, with stupid characters and plotholes galore (not to mention a silly ending -- surely the dog could have been thrown overboard easily enough). But there's something nice about a movie made with a total cast of seven, and one that focuses less on silly quips (the Cujo line is it) and gore (we see very little blood, which is especially nice in light of the vast number of canine fatalities), and more on tension and terror. First-time director Nicholas Mastandrea does a solid enough job of avoiding at least a few cliches, and the script (by the writing duo behind Who's Harry Crumb), dumb as it is, avoids some of the more obvious pitfalls, at least. It's not the canine version of The Birds, but folks like Harper and Rodriguez bring enough of a spark to the movie to keep me interested. This definitely deserves its direct-to-video status, but it's probably worth renting once it hits Netflix.
*And how the hell has one man done so many terrible movies without ever making one halfway-decent film? I mean, sure, he was probably contractually-obligated to to Highlander 4, even after reading the eighty pages of random dialogue passed off as a script, but that doesn't excuse the rest of his sorry career.
**I'm assuming that Manning insisted on using a stunt double for this dangerous scene that actually featured her eating, you know, food.
***I should note that Michelle Rodriguez is only limping mildly, pretty impressive for someone shot through the leg with an arrow.
****Because that's what idiots do.
Two pieces of good news here:
First, even before I watched it, I knew that The Breed couldn't be the worst horror flick featuring Michelle Rodriguez, thanks to her appearance in Bloodrayne.
Second, I also knew that this couldn't be the worst horror movie named The Breed, thanks to the 2001 stinker starring Adrian Paul*.
We start with a typical old-school slasher moment, as we meet two disposable victims before heading to the main plot. They're named Jenny and Luke, and they're traveling on Luke's private boat. They've managed to get completely lost, and she's also managed to get completely drunk. They spot an island, and, naturally, they pull up to the curiously abandoned dock. Drunken Jenny wanders around while Luke spends about twenty minutes hitching the boat to the dock. Jenny wanders around, finding a fence, a few paths, but no people. As she wanders, we get glimpses of four-legged creatures running past the camera. Eventually, Jenny hears something that scares her, and starts running away. Just as she assumes she's safe and hides behind a tree, something unseen grabs her legs and drags her through the woods! Luke calls after her, but Jenny keeps getting pulled by the unseen force (and loses a finger or two between camera cuts). Oh noes! There's something nasty on that there island!
We cut to our five heroes. They're a group of college kids who are flying to the island (on a private seaplane) to spend a relaxing weekend. These "kids", played by the likes of Hill Harper, Michelle Rodriguez, and Taryn Manning, all presumably joined the army after high school and/or emulated Zonker Harris, thus explaining why a bunch of late-20s and up folks are still in college. The hosts are pair of bland and largely interchangeable brothers, trust fund kids who own the island and the plane. Rodriguez is the girlfriend of the more studious brother (and had dated the other, it turns out), Manning has a crush on the less studious brother, and Harper is black, the joker of the bunch, and the fifth wheel, so he's pretty much got a horror-movie target painted on him. I could tell you the character names, but they really don't matter.
The next ten minutes are given to drinking, character development (they all like to drink), and watching them go through the trauma of not being able to fix the blender to make margaritas for a whole two minutes (a tragedy they manage to avert by drunkenly replacing a fuse). While drinking on the porch that afternoon, a cute puppy runs up the group, and Manning decides they need to keep him. We get more drinking, but that night, the puppy runs away. Manning and one of the brothers run after it, but Manning gets pounced by an older dog! The dog runs away, but Manning has been bitten. The vet student examines her and gives us all expository information about rabies (they have a week before she'd need shots, it's not likely to be rabid anyway, et cetera).
That night, Michelle Rodriguez is cuddled up in bed with her man, who only now mentions that the other half of the island used to be rented out to a seeing-eye-dog breeder, and that the dogs had to be put down last year because of rabies. Not that this could turn out to be important or anything. We also learn that if the rabid dogs had been released into the wild, they'd have died long ago, which is a relief.
We also see Taryn Manning starting to act weird. That night, she and the other brother make out for a bit, until she gets too rough. The next morning, she's being all cryptic and eating breakfast for about seven**. She also claims to feel fine. The brothers and Harper head into the woods to explore, and the girls go swimming.
When Harper takes a break to fix his camera, he's accosted by dogs. Oh noes! They chase him and eventually he runs into the brothers, who are skeptical.
Until a bloody Luke shows up! Remember Luke from the opening scene? Well, here he is, bloody and carrying a stick, and being all cryptic and telling the kids that the dogs don't want them on the island. He's like a WASPy Scatman Carauthers in The Shining! So, naturally, he dies! As the three friends look on, a dog leaps out of nowhere, taking Luke down a hillbank like Westley and Buttercup in The Princess Bride (you can almost imagine Luke shouting "as you wish" as he falls). As he gets torn apart by a pack of dogs at the bottom, the guys wisely decide to run away. Meanwhile, Manning seems to be psychically aware of the attack.
The boys get back to the cabin just as the girls emerge from swimming in the lake, and they all see the pack of dogs descending on them at the same time. A dog grabs ahold of Rodriguez by the pants, and the dumber brother (who has a bow) proceeds to do the dumbest thing imaginable: He fires at the dog from about forty yards away (even though all indications are that Rodriguez would have gotten away). The next sixty seconds take place in slow-mo, as the arrow slowly creeps through the air as if it were reading up on Zeno's paradox, and the dog slowly looks up, sees the arrow, and lets go. The arrow, after finally deciding that the paradox doesn't have any practical applications in the real world, finally makes to to Rodriguez, nailing her (still in slo-mo) through the calf. The dog runs away to join its buddies, confident that it's caused trouble. Rodriguez screams, and we cut to her inside the cabin, finally free of the slow-motion nightmare that has been the last minute of screentime.
We now get the nastiest moment of the movie, as we see the arrow getting pulled out of Rodriguez's leg. Afterwards, one brother suggests that the dog-breeder might have been creating attack dogs, and that these dogs might have a mutant species of rabies. Amazingly, no one makes a Cujo comment at this point, but Hill Harper does a poor man's imitation of Sam Jackson in Deep Blue Sea, ranting about how they'll stay in the cabin where it's safe, only to be interrupted when a dog leaps through the window at him. Unlike Sam, Hill doesn't buy it here, as the dog goes for Taryn (who seems weirdly mesmerized by it). One brother wrestles the dog to the ground, and the other stabs it to death.
The group gets ready to leave the island, but the dogs are between them and the plane. And worse, the dogs have untied the knots, so the seaplane is drifting away! Turns out the dogs have chewed through the rope! But dogs can't think like that, can they?
Only one brother can pilot the plane, so he swims out to it, only to find that two doggies are sitting on the wing (out of sight from the shore). It's an ambush! He makes it back to shore, and since the dogs are still new to learning warfare tactics, they only send one dog to flank the humans. Harper smacks it in midair with a baseball bat, and the group manages to outrun the rest and make it to the safety of the cabin as the plane drifts away.
Trapped, they assess the situation. No cell phone signal. Manning has a fever. Rodriguez is injured. Their plane is gone. The only hope they have is to get to the other side of the island, to see whatever brought Luke there or to see if the dog-breeding compound has any communications equipment. Fortunately, there's a car in the garage. Unfortunately, the garage is a good fifty feet from the house. And the dogs are still out there (chewing up the body of one of their fallen comrades).
So they come up with one of those plans that only comes up in horror movies. One brother hops on the zip-line that runs from the house to the garage (and which was shown during the assorted drinking scenes), but Rodriguez notes that she's lighter, and even injured, she's more athletic than anyone else there. In a move that's entirely expected, the rig doesn't go the entire length of the line, leaving Rodriguez to dangle about ten feet away, but she's Michelle Rodriguez, dammit, which means she's more than tough enough to shimmy the rest of the way to the garage before the dogs can get to her. As she attempts to start the car, the dogs batter against the front door, and the car does what cars in movies have always done, stalling time and again.
The dogs break into the garage, but she's Michelle Rodriguez, dammit!, which means that she can climb through the sunroof, flip up to the beams, and hide at the top of the garage before getting bitten. Alas, she's on the other side of the roof, away from the zipline. In a scene that borders on the inane, the rest of the group ties a line to an arrow, shoot it to the roof, and Michelle makes it to the zipline just ahead of the puppies bursting onto the roof after her. The brother with the bow even manages to shoot down one of the dogs in the process (somehow not hitting Rodriguez in the leg this time).
Holed up in the cabin the brothers bicker, and tensions mount. It's like Cabin Fever, only without the flesh-eating bacteria (and with slightly less stupid). They argue over the usual stuff (the wannabe vet is the perfect son, living up to his parents' memory, and the other one has always felt insecure), and afterwards, we get a few more character moments (with less booze), and the power blows out. Harper heads down to fix it (since he knows where the fusebox is from earlier).
At this point, I'd like to remind folks that Harper is A) a black man in a horror movie who isn't played by LL Cool J, B) the fifth wheel, C) the joker, and D) the guy going down to the dark basement with only a flashlight. Also, it's been nearly half an hour since anyone died (and Luke barely counts).
Harper heads down, fixes the fuse, and is about to head upstairs when the lights go out again. He goes back, trips over something, and notice that the basement door has a hole in it. Ruh-Roh! Cue Scooby and his buddies, and by the time the other guys get to the basement, the cast is down to four.
The guys barricade the basement as the girls barricade the main cabin door (now under canine siege as well). The puppies overwhelm the heroes, however, so everyone beats a retreat to the attic. Alas, the younger brother gets attacked and bitten during the retreat.
Holed up in the attic, nerves fray for a few moments, until the younger brother finds some records of the dogs which prove that they were experimented on and bred as attack dogs. Turns out their Uncle Frank might be connected to whatever was going on, even though he was supposed to be an animal rights activist. We don't find out anything else because it's time for the characters to do something stupid!
This time, they all head down to the second floor of the house, and barricade the two girls inside a room for safety while the big macho men search for the puppies (with only the bow and arrow as a weapon)***. They explore, realizing that the dogs have marked their territory inside the house, and then head outside to the garage. Somehow, the dogs never attack, and the guys attempt to get the car going when one pushes it and the other pops the clutch. It doesn't quite work, but the car does move downhill on the road. Of course, this causes the pre-vet brother (outside the car) to fall down, upon which the dogs go for him. Oh noes! But he makes it to the car and hops on the roof.
Remember how I said they were going to do something stupid? The brother on the roof has his brother pass the bow up through the skylight, and attempts to shoot from a moving car. If there were an Academy Award for Stupidity, this character would get it. Fortunately, the folks behind the movie aren't quite as stupid, and when the dogs attack the car, moron-boy drops the bow. Oh no! Defenseless against a pack of dogs, instead of having a weapon that can fire one shot infrequently. What will they do?
They do what you or I would do: they shift the car down a steep cliff face, and the clutch pops at the last possible second, thus giving them a working car. They drive up to the house, but the idiots have the car windows open****, and a dog hops in! The pre-vet (in the passenger seat) fights it off for a while, and the other brother drives the car close to a post, knocking the dog off as it smashes into the post.
When they get to the house, Rodriguez tells them that Manning won't come down. Her crush object goes in after her, but she's all dark and broody, and when a dog somehow corners them in the upstairs bedroom, she steps in the way to fight it. As Manning and the puppy duke it out, the brother gets knocked through the window, where he tumbles onto the porch roof and onto the floor. Seconds later, the dog and Manning go flying out the window as well, only to both land on a metal pole on an old playground toy.
The three survivors drive across the island to the dog-training compound. They hop the fence (and, to their credit, are smart enough to leave the car running, so they don't have to worry about it starting up again), and find that the compound looks almost like every deserted scientific compound in every survival horror game. And, as with many survival horror games, it's here that they find the proof that the scientists were genetically redesigning the dogs. They also find the radio, which gets no signal, but they have enough McGuyver-esque knowledge between them to get the power going off batteries. They still can't get the radio going (or their cell phones, even with the towers at the compound), but they do come up with some sort of plan to hook up the disconnected antenna, and the older brother goes to take care of it.
While he does so, the younger brother mopes and makes out with his girlfriend. Needless to say, kissing Michelle Rodriguez gets the old brain juices flowing, and he realizes something: If the dogs were able to get out of the compound to the rest of the island, then surely they have a way to get back inside as well! At which point the audience collectives goes, "duh," although we also have to admit that we'd fake not figuring out the obvious if it meant a chance to make out with Michelle Rodriguez.
Cut to the brother outside, who has A) seen Luke's boat, and B) gotten the tower working. He gives the signal to the folks inside, but when Rodriguez starts the radio, it causes the fusebox to blow, leading to a fire in the basement, and to the poor guy falling off the tower when it sparks up. As he stumbles back to safety, he's attacked by dogs, who have dug under the fence, just like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. As things look hopeless for him, out comes little brother with a baseball bat! So much for his career as a vet!
As the brothers (both of whom have now been bitten, and need mutant rabies shots) take on the puppies, Rodriguez notices the fire. However the outside door is guarded by three dogs. She lures them inside near an open gas line, and when they get close enough, she opens a door with a fire behind it (letting in a backdraft) and tells them to "give Cujo my best." Yes, after 78 minutes, we finally get a reference to Cujo! And then a massive explosion! The dogs attacking the brother back off after this, giving the brothers enough time to share info about the boat, but the canines soon surround the brothers again, and all looks lost until Rodriguez, who has snuck off, busts through the fence in the car and rescues them. She drives the car into the water, and they all swim for Luke's boat, making it to the dock ahead of the canines, and they motor off into the sunset as the puppies wistfully look on.
As the heroes sail into the distance, they open up the boat's cargo hold, only for a dog to jump out and attack them as we fade to credits!
The Breed is certainly a dumb movie, with stupid characters and plotholes galore (not to mention a silly ending -- surely the dog could have been thrown overboard easily enough). But there's something nice about a movie made with a total cast of seven, and one that focuses less on silly quips (the Cujo line is it) and gore (we see very little blood, which is especially nice in light of the vast number of canine fatalities), and more on tension and terror. First-time director Nicholas Mastandrea does a solid enough job of avoiding at least a few cliches, and the script (by the writing duo behind Who's Harry Crumb), dumb as it is, avoids some of the more obvious pitfalls, at least. It's not the canine version of The Birds, but folks like Harper and Rodriguez bring enough of a spark to the movie to keep me interested. This definitely deserves its direct-to-video status, but it's probably worth renting once it hits Netflix.
*And how the hell has one man done so many terrible movies without ever making one halfway-decent film? I mean, sure, he was probably contractually-obligated to to Highlander 4, even after reading the eighty pages of random dialogue passed off as a script, but that doesn't excuse the rest of his sorry career.
**I'm assuming that Manning insisted on using a stunt double for this dangerous scene that actually featured her eating, you know, food.
***I should note that Michelle Rodriguez is only limping mildly, pretty impressive for someone shot through the leg with an arrow.
****Because that's what idiots do.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-27 05:39 am (UTC)Oh please tell me it's a tetherball pole! All impaling deaths from great heights should happen on tetherball poles!
As he stumbles back to safety, he's attacked by dogs, who have dug under the fence, just like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.
They used spoons?
(kidding) :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-27 08:00 am (UTC)This is my hat.
*takes hat off*
My hat is off to you, sir. I like neither horror films nor film reviews, yet I find myself waiting eagerly for your next installment.
Bravo. Kudos.
*applauds*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-27 04:23 pm (UTC)Perhaps this would have made a better film?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-27 08:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-27 08:49 pm (UTC)Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-27 08:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-27 09:08 pm (UTC)