Monster Dog

Monster Dog

There is no disputing the fact that Alice Cooper is one of (if not the) single greatest rock stars to ever live, with so many classic, timeless songs to his resume as well as the endurance to still be around to this day, still touring and performing to raging sell out crowds but more importantly, still releasing albums of new material regularly which he incorporates into his shows along with his usual greatest hits. But things were not always perfect for the legendary Cooper, as he was a raging alcoholic from the start of his career and then in the late 70s (allegedly) developed a cocaine addiction as well, resulting in a hazy series of albums all the way through to the early 80s (which he actually claimed to not even remember recording) along with his health deteriorating so badly that he is said to have almost died on at least one occasion. Even worse was the fact that when he decided to sober up and clean up his act in 1983 (which he did), his record label suddenly decided to drop him, figuring that he was too washed up at that point to ever be great again. While Cooper would famously prove that assumption wrong as the years went on, at the time he was still looking to be a part of something so that he could keep working and also keep his name out there. That led to him signing on for this 1984 ultra low budget B horror movie, filmed in Spain with Alice being reassured that the film would not see a release outside of that country (not true), so Cooper decided to take the money and take the plunge, writing two original songs exclusively for the film and while the result remains to this day a must see for any Alice fan, it’s interesting to take note of the flaws and clichés that run rampant throughout, with perhaps the most outrageous thing being the obvious dubbing of Alice himself (whose own speaking voice has always been distinctive and easy to understand) who we only hear for real whenever he’s singing his two songs while the rest of the time his spoken dialogue is dubbed over by a guy who sounds like Jeff Goldblum on Xanax! If one can get through the first ten minutes of Alice not sounding like Alice, then one might be okay although keep in mind that the entire first half is pretty slow going until the second half kicks the action into gear. The films opens with what looks like an attempt at an Alice music video with a song called “Identity Crisis”. It’s not a bad song really, and then from there we learn that his character is actually named “Vincent Raven” (ironic because Alice’s real first name is Vincent), a world famous rock star who is heading to his ancestral home with a small skeleton crew to shoot yet another video called “See Me In The Mirror” which is apparently a vampire piece and is not bad by Alice standards either (although both are only available on The Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper CD boxset). The actual plot itself concerns what amounts to a series of attacks by what appears to be wild dogs ripping its victims to shreds in Alice’s hometown, although the canines themselves (recruited from a local seeing eye dog school) appear to be the same type of cute, cuddly little guys which you see in most pet friendly homes. But there is also another creature out and about, one which appears to be a genuine werewolf as the film’s novel twist here states that the (once human) werewolf is also the “Lord Of The Dogs”, possessing the ability to command any and all normal dogs to do his bidding including ripping any unlucky (or unwanted) victims to shreds. It also turns out that Alice’s long dead father had something to do with this curse, with the local sheriff even mentioning that fact right in front of his friends. Undaunted, the crew continue on to the mansion to shoot their little video, running over a dog on the way and even encountering a crazy old man spouting doomsday prophecies (similar to Crazy Ralph in Friday The 13th). The video shoot crew even have a female member amongst them with psychic abilities who is granted the luxury of an entire dream sequence where she alone has the entire dynamics of the plot spelled out for her (although we don’t realize it yet) and whom upon awakening tries to warn everybody of their gruesome fates even as the others decide to pay little heed to Psychic Girl’s babblings. The shoot goes on schedule even as a minor character’s dead body is discovered and a gaggle of armed locals (looking like refugees from a bad Spaghetti Western) show up looking for Alice with the stated intention of murdering him so that the “curse” may be lifted. But alas, Alice (still wearing his makeup and costume from the video shoot) has gone off looking for someone or something (as he often does in this film) and he’s carrying his trusty shotgun with him (something he knows how to use) and the rest of the film turns into shootouts with his own lynch mob, random attacks from the wide eyed killer dogs from Hell and some random jump scares. We do get what is arguably one of the best head shot deaths in movie history, that of a chrome domed vigilante whom Alice gets the drop on and completely blows the top of his bald head clean off, leaving him twitching with a contorted face as he slumps to the ground with no brains. We also get one of the funniest jump scare bits in movie history when Alice and two of his lady friends decide to just drive off and out of there, but they forgot the keys! So Alice and one lady friend go back in to retrieve them, leaving the other lady friend sitting alone in the car and reassuring her that she’ll be safe as long as the car stays locked. When they return with the keys, they take off and are halfway down the road when they finally check the backseat and find their friend dead! But that’s not all: Who else should be hiding in the backseat ready to attack than a full sized werewolf (guess he was pretty quiet)?? This and other moments help to place this squarely in the VERY cheesy horror movie category that The European Market (which was flooded with Living Dead zombie ripoffs and overly stylized slasher films which came to be known as giallos) seemed to always specialize in, but it’s also true that almost NONE of them ever managed to score a major American rock star (and future Rock n Roll Hall Of Famer) to be their leading man and that’s where the ongoing interest still lies today even as the atrocious sounding dub job prevents us from seeing just what kind of an actor Alice really was (and coming right off his addiction problems, he does look a little worn out) even while we do get ridiculous dialogue like having his girlfriend / assistant telling him, “You are the hottest rock n roll star….in the world!” (emphasis on the awkward pause in the dialogue which happens pretty often). Then there’s the bit where Alice explains that being a werewolf is real, but that it’s more like a “heart disease” than what you see in the movies. Of special note was that the “killer dogs” were really starved for a couple of days prior to filming with the actors then having special dog food underneath their clothing for the attack scenes which made for a pretty tense set to say the least. And of course there’s the sight of Alice traipsing around with a shotgun in hand since it is heavily implied that the two other male members of the skeleton crew (who are lavishly chewed to shreds) are actually gay and that it is Alice’s character (the big rock star whose video they are shooting) who also has to act as the big protector for everybody since he seems to be the only one who is man enough to do it. Just one bit of ridiculousness piled on top of another with no literal end in sight but that’s just exactly how The Europeans liked to do it. While the truly great werewolf movie has already been definitively made (1981’s American Werewolf), there are still some very good ones laying around that expand upon the themes in real world terms and also succeed in providing some pretty good scares as well. This on the other hand, just seems, well, more like a chance to get Alice Cooper into something (which he later regretted) that could be marketed around his name even though there’s no real depth to the whole enterprise (the character development for the other crew members except for Psychic Girl is virtually nil) while Alice himself gives an obscured (dubbed) performance that only really comes alive whenever he sings and we get to hear his actual voice, otherwise there’s almost no hint of the tortured soul that he was obviously meant to be here and very little reason to give this a viewing unless you’re a hardcore fan of either him or really bad, cheesy B horror movies…

4/10

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