Friday, May 26, 2006
MOVIE CORNER: WHITE DOG
I was recently up in the Chicago are for a couple of weeks. While there, I saw several movies from the invaluable Odd Obsession Movies (which, incidentally, is moving to 1822 N. Milwaukee Ave. beginning June 1). Among these was Samuel Fuller's 1982 film White Dog. White Dog is not a perfect film: the allegory is a bit too transparent for my taste, and some of the human performances are weak (though Kristy McNichol, as one of the leads, is good). But of the Fuller films I've seen, it may be my favorite overall. If it doesn't rise to the fevered heights of The Naked Kiss at its best, it also doesn't sink to the bathetic depths of that film at its worst. It's less heavyhanded, and less wonky, than Shock Corridor. And it's a lot more interesting than The Big Red One (though granted, I only watched the unrestored version of this, and less than an hour of that). Yet White Dog was buried by the studio, and is now virtually unavailable in the U.S.
Like Never Let Me Go, it's probably best to not know anything about White Dog's plot when you first see it, and the reason why it was buried is inseparable from its plot. But if you're curious, the first paragraph of this article tells what happened.
The quality of the picture in Odd Obsession's copy is not very good. Furthermore, there are unremovable Dutch subtitles, which are annoying (unless you're Dutch). But this is probably as good a copy as you're likely to find.
I was recently up in the Chicago are for a couple of weeks. While there, I saw several movies from the invaluable Odd Obsession Movies (which, incidentally, is moving to 1822 N. Milwaukee Ave. beginning June 1). Among these was Samuel Fuller's 1982 film White Dog. White Dog is not a perfect film: the allegory is a bit too transparent for my taste, and some of the human performances are weak (though Kristy McNichol, as one of the leads, is good). But of the Fuller films I've seen, it may be my favorite overall. If it doesn't rise to the fevered heights of The Naked Kiss at its best, it also doesn't sink to the bathetic depths of that film at its worst. It's less heavyhanded, and less wonky, than Shock Corridor. And it's a lot more interesting than The Big Red One (though granted, I only watched the unrestored version of this, and less than an hour of that). Yet White Dog was buried by the studio, and is now virtually unavailable in the U.S.
Like Never Let Me Go, it's probably best to not know anything about White Dog's plot when you first see it, and the reason why it was buried is inseparable from its plot. But if you're curious, the first paragraph of this article tells what happened.
The quality of the picture in Odd Obsession's copy is not very good. Furthermore, there are unremovable Dutch subtitles, which are annoying (unless you're Dutch). But this is probably as good a copy as you're likely to find.
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