SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Leofwine_draca RABID DOGS is an Italian thriller of the 1970s, directed by master of horror Mario Bava, and perhaps better known for the unfortunate production wranglings surrounding it than for being a top thriller in its own right. The movie's producer died, money dried up, and RABID DOGS never saw the light of day until after the director died in 1990. Since then, Bava's son Lamberto did his own version, KIDNAPPED, which was by all accounts an inferior work, and a French remake of the same name came out in 2015 which is probably better known than the original film.Thankfully, Marc Morris and the team at Arrow have finally put together Mario Bava's original movie and released it onto a stunning Blu-ray which no doubt took a lot of blood, sweat, and painstaking work to achieve. The result is an edge-of-the-seat thriller that throws the viewer into a real-time story of crazed robbers and their hostages in exceptionally harrowing way. This low budget film is set in the interior of a car for most of the running time and yet the suspense never lets up. It's very adult, very gritty, and downbeat too; the performances of the larger-than-life characters are quite electrifying. The first twenty minutes of this film are as well directed and stylish as anything else I could mention. Elements of the movie are inspired by Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, but Bava's palm-sweating style is all his own.

Darkling_Zeist Mario Bava fashions a lean an' mean, exhilarating kidnap yarn, including yet another protean performance from George Eastman. 'Rabid Dogs' is a masterclass of dynamic, economical film-making. Set mostly within the cloying confines of a sweltering automobile; a clearly mean-spirited, Bava's ratchets the tension up to an almost impossibly frantic degree, with the total lack of digressions keeping the pace brisk with frank outbursts of savage violence that suddenly jolt you far out of your comfort zone. 'Rabid Dogs' is Stylish, brutal Italian action cinema at its very finest. Not only was Mario Bava the absolute master of mood, atmosphere and exemplary lighting in Gothic cinema; his obvious mastery of gritty Euro Crime action is yet more demonstrative evidence of his grand cinematic legacy.

HumanoidOfFlesh Four criminals rob the weekend payroll of a pharmaceutical company.After one is killed by the police,the others ditch the getaway car.They steal another belonging to everyman Riccardo.They take him,his young sick baby and a woman off the street named Maria hostage and head for the open road."Rabid Dogs" is easily the darkest and most cynical film of a talented horror director Mario Bava.It concentrates on the character dynamics and the growing suspense on what will happen to unfortunate hostages.The violence and abuse is mean-spirited and the ugliness oozes from the screen.The scene,where two thugs force Maria to urinate is unforgettable in its grim nastiness.There are a lot of twists and turns in a surprisingly straightforward story.Overall,I'd highly recommend "Rabid Dogs" to fans of Mario Bava and exploitation movies.9 out of 10.

Jonny_Numb One of the macabre fascinations of the "survival horror" genre is to see how far filmmakers will push the moral and ethical sensibilities of the viewer--contrasted against movies where some otherworldly monster is the main adversary (thus clearly defining the bounds of "good" and "evil"), something like "Last House on the Left" is more prone to pushing our buttons because the perpetrators are as flesh-and-blood as any human being. "Rabid Dogs" (aka "Kidnapped") falls nicely into this tradition, and could be the finest variation on the formula next to Wes Craven's landmark. As directed by Mario Bava, the film is a visually stunning and uncomfortably claustrophobic tale of three criminals who commit an early-morning robbery and take three hostages (a female pedestrian, and the father of a sick child) and embark on a road trip wrought with sleaze and violence. While most renowned for his period horror films, Bava brings his own sense of visual flair to the proceedings (note how he films the deserted "farm" like a Gothic castle), contrasting panoramic shots of open, seemingly empty highways and countrysides with invasive, cramped close-ups of the criminals and hostages (in a way, we begin to also feel like captives in a hot car). Bava is surprisingly fearless in his portrayal of amorality, but the script actually develops both victim and victimized beyond the usual genre predictability--by the time we reach the film's closing twist, "Rabid Dogs" has made a stinging indictment against the greed and violence of the modern world, wrapped up in an unapologetically nihilistic package. It's a good, hard-hitting genre piece that may just make you think a little.