Man's Best Friend

source: Man's Best Friend

"Man's Best Friend", about a genetically altered dog that kills any perceived threat, is pretty much what you'd expect. Ally Sheedy really chews the scenery as the reporter investigating cruelty to animals and inadvertently releasing the bloodthirsty pooch. But no matter, the movie still is pretty fun to watch, with the full understanding that it's basically a totally dumb flick. Lance Henriksen, playing the scientist who created the murderous hound, lets his face do the acting. Like I said, it's mostly just a fun movie to watch. Definitely nothing special about it. Although I should admit that I'd never heard of a Tibetan mastiff until I read a description of the movie.

Directed by John Lafia. Starring Lance Henriksen, Ally Sheedy, Fredric Lehne, Robert Costanzo, John Cassini, Trula M. Marcus, William Sanderson, J.D. Daniels. (R) Clumsy reporter Sheedy breaks into an animal testing lab and emancipates a Tibetan mastiff, which turns out to be a very special canine. How special? He can open doors, flush toilets, headbutt windshields, outrun and jump over speeding cars, swallow cats whole, urinate acid, that sort of thing (in one throwaway scene, he even disappears into the background like a chameleon, but never again after that). Dopey comedy disguised as a killer-animal horror movie is neither unwatchable nor remotely gratifying. Chief misstep is letting the dog appear cute and cuddly until the final reel; the threat level is about even with an unchained Beethoven, not Cujo. Only Henriksen as the scientist who "created" the enhanced pooch seems to realize just how ridiculous it all is and acts accordingly. One of the taglines reads: "His bark isn't half as bad...as his bite!" Oh, it bites, all right... 31/100

I was highly disappointed to see that the dog who plays Max in this film is not credited anywhere on the IMDB page - and he was the best actor in the whole darn movie! The whole half-dog/half-human brain thing (at least I think that's what it was supposed to be) was pulled off incredibly well by this pooch. I mean, he had EXPRESSIONS! When he looked up at Ally Sheedy's boyfriend after he tried to slip him some spiked dog chow - that LOOK! GRRRR!!! It was great! That dog should get an Oscar! ;-)

This mutated dog sci-fi/ horror / black comedy requires complete suspension of disbelief, and if you can live with that premise, you will find "Man's Best Friend" entertaining. Although Lance Henriksen receives second billing, his screen time is somewhat disappointing. The sci-fi element is never explored, giving way to "Cudjo"-like maulings and some moments of "dark comedy". There is a little too much cutesy stuff involving the genetically engineered dog, but overall other than the lack of Henriksen, this is a totally acceptable time waster. The dog is really the star, with the actors assuming a secondary role. - MERK

This is a silly and nonsensical monster movie which mixes sci-fi elements in with plenty of tired and predictable clichés, rounded off by an unbelievable plot which bears little resemblance to real life. The intriguing possibilities of a killer dog movie are quickly dissipated when you realise that this is a family-orientated movie, complete with lame jokes and so much sweet talk and sentimentality that it'll make you physically sick (it certainly made ME sick). After the initial set-up, the film is merely content to go through the paces, introducing one-dimensional characters who are set up just to be killed off. The many death scenes in this film are generally off screen and not very gory, although some of them will make you jump. Sadly they're shot in such a slick way that any suspense or terror emanating from them is destroyed, as they just look too unrealistic. There are so many plot discrepancies that it's impossible to list all of them, plot twists are based on contrivances and you begin to wonder if the story was written by a child. The acting - well, if you can call it acting - from Ally Sheedy as the film's lead is terrible, her character a simpering idiot who fails to see what's going on right in front of her eyes. Incredibly, Sheedy continues to love the killer dog despite the fact that its eaten a cat whole, mutilated her boyfriend (via acid urine, go figure) and devoured half of the minor cast. The ever-reliable Lance Henriksen is on hand as a cruel scientist, and incredibly he's vilified as the film's chief villain - even though his only sin is to try and get his own property back! This is definitely a movie that makes no secret of its distaste for animal experimentation, as you get the morals shoved down your throat at every opportunity, the intelligent character Henriksen plays a mean-spirited and bad, bad person - despite the fact that he himself mentions that his research is being carried out for the good of mankind! Elsewhere, familiar faces like that of Robert Costanzo pop up but fail to make much of an impact, although I did like William Sanderson's bastard scrapyard owner whose first action upon receiving the dog is to club it with a spade! Whilst the first half of this film is schmaltzy, feel good stuff - you could be forgiven for thinking that you're watching BEETHOVEN, actually - packed with silly humour and obnoxious characters, the second half - a violent string of brutal murders - sits oddly with the beginning. Indeed some of this film's scenes border on the deeply unpleasant, like one character burning the dog's face with a blow torch as he is attacked! It's not really necessary, just a reason to give the dog an ugly look to make it more frightening. It's not. Kevin Yagher's usually reliable special effects work are also below par, the animatronics instantly recognisable from the real dog(s) used. The final insult comes at the end of this movie. What an infantile, stupid, moronic way to end the film. Aside from the incidental pleasure of watching a dog rip a postman to shreds, MAN'S BEST FRIEND is an appalling and ugly film to watch, one that offended me deeply.

This is your basic something-gets-loose-and-kills-everyone movie. The acting is bad, the effects are bad and the music is bad. Why does composer Jerry Goldsmith do this to himself? The Sci-Fi concept in this movie is horrid and stupid. It makes no sense at trying to be real. The only thing that kept me watching this crude trash was to watch the cute looking dog perform tricks.

John Lafia puts his own stamp of original design on this piece about a genetically engineered dog. It's part suspense, part horror, part comedy, part sci fi, part police investigation, part investigative reporting, part family life. Lafia is careful not to emulate Verhoeven, which is why I think he shied away from the completely "in your face" style, but one gets the impression Lafia does this out of a desire to create his own style. That isn't easy, but he does a nice job of it. What makes this film work is that Lafia always makes sure he keeps the black comedy going. However, I'd like to have seen more scenic shots than city streets. Most of us see cars and buildings all the time, and are bored by seeing them in the cinema. Most of the action takes place either in businesses, city streets, motor vehicles, or houses, probably the four dullest settings you can have for film. Which is why the black comedy works so well. We start off with two sides, the two main human characters. One is heavy in animal rights. The other is heavy into experimentation. Unfortunately, the "experimenter" has more than a few screws loose, so this is one sided. Lafia is very clever in disguising this for a long time. I don't think he needed to. It probably would have worked just as well if the "heavy" was not insane. The dog is sort of a Frankenstein's monster, and yet very much like any dog you would meet. One of the funniest things about this film is how many adults don't know how to react around the canine genus. And that is probably the underlying theme here. Lafia is poking fun at the modern man who has lost touch with Nature. We can forgive the kids in the film for not knowing how to handle dogs, and yet even they seem to have more common sense than most of the adults. Very interesting. Very lucky to be made in the nineties, perhaps the worst decade in film, so it looks even better when compared to movies of that decade.

This was on TV last night and I gave it a shot when I read Lance Henkrisen is a lead. Boy was I wrong to do so. This must have been one of the most stupid movies I have ever seen. What annoyed me the most was the totally incorrect show of dog behaviour, and no, I don't mean when that dog turned mutated bad, I mean before. The female lead acts outrageously stupid as well, keeping a really big dog she saw attacking her boyfriend and like it was nothing, naively giving it to be taken for a walk to a 6 year-old small boy. Great idea. This boy though and his friend are real ahoes and get the dog to chase and kill and eat a poor cat in the worst ever monster swallowing scene in film history. Oh yeah, and when mutant dog turns crazy he just kill for the sake of it, and no, not only the bad guys, also the postman who was just there at the wrong time. It all ends with muti-dog being killed, his evil experimenting professor being electrocuted in another surreal stupid scene where another baby dog pulls the electrocuting trigger. Next scene, some months later, the female collie mutant dog impregnated has babies, they all look like collies but aha, there is one which looks like a Rottweiler mix. Yeah, that is not how genetics work in procreation. Terrible story line, terrible special effects, the producers had absolutely no clue about dog behaviour whatsoever, and these kind of stupid movies do absolutely nothing for the already and wrongly bad reputation of wonderful breeds like the Rottweiler for example. So yeah, total trash, couldn't loathe it more.

I saw this in the movie theaters. It seemed like this movie came out a long time ago. Before I saw this movie, I thought it was going to be a PG rated kids movie. Well it wasn't. The movie had an excellent horror taste to it, it wasn't slow and the dog was very violent. This one beats Cujo and wayyyyyyyyy better than Dogs of Hell. 4.5 out of 5 stars.