Customer Reviews

Monster Dog

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A group of rock 'n rollers end up dead meat when they run across a mutant beast on the road home to their next show, but they soon find out that the monster may actually be walking among them! Alice Cooper leads this awful mess of a monster movie, which can't decide if it is a killer animal flick, a werewolf tale, or a ghost story. Its convenient plot seems like nothing more than a poor excuse to throw Cooper on stage in a few cheesy music video moments. MONSTER DOG'S hand-puppet monster is likewise a laughable joke, but thankfully it is kept shrouded in the fog for the majority of the film. The only shot that is even worth mentioning in the entire picture is a shotgun blast that cleaves a guy's skull in two, but other than that this is a trashy creature-feature out of Spain that can easily be missed.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

Alice Cooper, making his first horror movie at age 36, in Torrelodones,
rural Spain, acquits himself as a star (never doubted), but also as an
acceptable actor in taking on this rather underwritten role. His dark,
gaunt, part-Sioux Indian looks and fluid movements are perfect for the
lead role of Vincent Raven, "The Hottest Rock Star In The World," which
Alice genuinely was around 1973-1976! Mr. Raven and young crew travel
to his family mansion in the California mountains to shoot a "rock-video."

It seems there are packs of big hounds running wild, and maybe a werewolf
too. As in "Daughter of Dr. Jekyll" and "Son of Frankenstein," the local
peasants are prejudiced against "Vince" and company, because his father had
unleashed terror on the countryside, twenty years before. This leads to
some excitement as a leathered-up, gunshooting Alice splatters bad guys
(like in his 1971 classic tune, "Desperado," itself inspired by Robert
Vaughn's dudified "Lee" in 1960's "The Magnificent Seven"). There are
also a spate of bloody attacks by a "Halloween-mask" looking lycanthrope.

As a "modern-era" horror movie, there have been plenty worse than "Monster
Dog." It makes little sense, but did you care? The writer-director, none
other than "Clyde Anderson" (must be Scottish!) coats the events in enough
fog to please even Sherlock Holmes (who also makes a brief appearance)!
If you want to see the legendary Alice Cooper portray "himself" in a
fun, schlocky horror movie, "Monster Dog" is not a total bow-wow,
although it's got a "VHS style" full-screen and picture quality. Included
in the action are two fun rock-videos of ultra-rare Cooper songs, "Identity Chrises," (sic),
and "See Me in the Mirror."

The actor playing the main bad guy, Ricardo Palacios, is a familiar
(ugly) face from Clint Eastwood's "Spaghetti Westerns."
Alice Cooper personally gives "Monster Dog" two stars, harsher than me!
He also has a sports bar-restaurant with much career memorabilia,
"Cooperstown," in downtown Phoenix, Arizona.

If your considering buying this movie it is probably because Alice Cooper is in. The best feature of this movie are the videos of a couple of the songs from his 80-83 years. I haven't seen this in awhile but I believe there were two songs from "Zipper Catches Skin" made into videos for this movie. The movie itself is a low budget South American affair and has been a cause of great embarressment for Alice.

Me and my wife got this because she's the big Alice Cooper fan(atic) and so is her mom. We knew going in that it was going to be a very very bad movie, which helped us enjoy it for what it was... a pretty weak excuse to get Cooper doing some mediocre acting and some decent singing in his only movie. His surrounding cast's performance helps not at all and the monster effects are what is expected of a very low budget 80's horror flick.

Good for a laugh or three, as a collectible for a Cooper collection and (in my case) for falling asleep on the couch. You have been warned!

The presence of Alice Cooper is probably the only reason someone might be interested at all in Monster Dog. While viewing it you soon realize the joke's been on you. I've certainly seen worse films than Monster Dog, but this movie could have been alot more fun than it actually is. Director Claudio Fragrasso certainly didn't dazzle most of us with Zombie 4 or his script for Zombie 3, and Monster Dog is yet another example of Claudio's shortcomings in the horror genre. Storywise, it's rather simple-Alice and his crew go to his father's mansion to shoot a rock video. Meanwhile, a pack of wild and muderous dogs is roaming the area. Also, Alice's father was lynched years ago for being a suspected werewolf, so naturally Alice's arrival leads the townfolk to feel he's a werewolf also, and is responsible for the wild dogs. Sounds decent enough, but something's really missing. I don't mind the shoestring budget or the bad acting, but something just doesn't work about it. Since the film's not suspenseful or very interesting, more gore could have saved the film I suppose. Cooper can't really carry the weight of the film himself, but that's not his fault as much as it is the script's. Cooper is one of the major reasons to watch the film however coz you keep asking yourself how the hell he got talked into it. Alice was probably in the lowest point in his career at this time(not in terms of his music, which was excellent, but in terms of his popularity in the US), but still very successful abroad, so the guy wasn't strapped for cash in any way. But sometimes celebrities take odd jobs in other countries for fun or an extra bit of money. Alice did tell me(yeah, I met Alice, how do ya like them apples?) that he was assured that this film wouldn't be seen in America, but only in a few small countries. He realizes himself that the film is bad and has a rather humorous attitude about the film. He also did two songs for the film which are actually quite good(probably the best thing about the movie), but never showed up on any album, but rather on his box set. Plus, his voice is dubbed! That's a distraction, but anyone who knows Italian productions knows that this happens quite a bit considering Italians never shot sound while shooting their films. At it's best, Monster Dog has a few chuckles a potentially good plot, and two cool tunes, which is more than you can say about Zombie 4.

The movie is a 1star CHEESY CHEEZY movie,The Dubbing and editing is bad and the acting,It's made in Spain and the only cool thing about it Is Alice Cooper is In it, So that's a plus for Alice Cooper Fans,the Minus is having to watch the movie.

It takes 3 movies to form a subgenre. "Monster Dog" rounds out the subgenre of "rock band goes to an isolated location in the woods and encounters supernatural beings who kill most of them." Admittedly, this is a very specialized subgenre. The other members are Juan Piquer Simon's classic "Pod People" and Jon-Mikl Thor's "Rock and Roll Nightmare," both of which are much more over the top and entertaining than "Monster Dog." Having said that, "Monster Dog" is well worth adding to your bad movie collection.

Right after the reddest credits in the world, the movie begins with the cheesiest, and funniest, Alice Cooper song and video that you will ever see. I will sometimes pop in this disc and just watch the video when I'm feeling down. It'll perk you right up! Alice disagrees, though; when the movie cuts away from the video to a customized van in which Alice and his bad are being driven by their manager, he tells her that "it stinks!" This is a direct homage to the previous year's "Pod People," where Ian Sera's "it stinks!" after his recording session is perhaps the greatest moment of that film.

The band is in the van en route to Alice Cooper's childhood home, where he hasn't been for years. On the way, they pass through several police roadblocks. The cops are out there because wild dogs have killed several people, and as you know roadblocks are the most effective method of controlling dogs. After they arrive at the Cooper home, they find the caretaker dead (but only after they find the delicious sandwiches that kindly old man had made for them). Of course, they find the dead caretaker in the middle of shooting another video, one with a song that is actually pretty good.

Then the band is menaced by bikers who think that Cooper is behind the dog killings. You see, Cooper's dad was a werewolf, or had some kind of werewolf like disease, or something. The rockers dispatch the evil bikers, but then most fall prey to the evil dogs. I won't spoil the ending for you, but if you think you know who the titular monster dog is, you're right. Strangely, for all the stuff that happens, this is a movie that has a number of tedious and slow parts. It feels much longer than its 75 minutes.

"Monster Dog" gets 4 stars as a bad movie. If you own no other movies of this subgenre, I'd get "Pod People" and "Rock and Roll Nightmare" first. But don't neglect this forgotten classic.

It doesn't get much better than this. Alice Cooper plays international music superstar Vincent Raven, the "biggest rockstar in the world." by his girlfriend's estimate. This film has some of the cheesiest, most ridiculously dumb dialogue you could ever hear and it makes me wonder about Italian horror movies. Why are they so bad? So bad they're good, that is.
The film begins and ends with a music video by alice cooper that is the silliest thing you will ever see. He is dressed up in various costumes such as Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, Billy the Kid, James Bond, etc. It's great. In between we have a hilarious werewolf movie schlock fest that serves up lots of blood and gore, as any good italian horror film should.
The film was made by Claudio Fragasso under his pseudonym Clyde Anderson. To describe ol' Claudio's style two words come to mind: FOG MACHINE. His films have so much mist floating around in the frames, it's cool looking and all, but does anywhere on the planet have that much fog and mist floating around constantly? Anyway, Fragasso has written, directed, and/or co-directed some of Italy's BEST BAD MOVIES! Hell of the Living Dead (aka Night of the Zombies, aka Virus), the infamous Troll 2, Rats: Night of Terror, Zombie 3, and my personal favorite, Zombie 4: After Death (aka Oltre la morte) are the highlights of his resume of Italian horror exploitation films. He worked on many of them with Bruno Mattei, sometimes without being credited.
So if you enjoy the italian exploitation genre or if you like the 80s heavy metal horror stuff I must urge you to check out this film.
The only bad thing is that the DVD picture and sound quality are not much better than a VHS copy, and there are few extras to speak of. I would love to see this film come out in a restored special edition, hopefully someone like Blue Underground, Shriek Show, or Synapse will pick it up eventually.

This DVD is region 0 fullscreen and was made from a vhs tape. Not great quality nor any special features. Unless you really must see this movie out of curiosity, don't spend more than a few bucks for it. You are probably better off just buying the vhs tape.
For fans of director Claudio Fragasso, this is nowhere near as entertaining as Troll 2. It's very sluggish in most parts and Alice Cooper's voice is dubbed.
On the plus side: Cooper's musical performances are quite good - this coming from a non-fan. Also, the last couple of minutes of the movie of Cooper's "American Werewolf in London"-like transformation are truly hilarious.

The year was 1984, and world famous music producer Bruce Dikenson had a life changing discussion with well known rocker Alice Cooper. He told Alice that he needed to really explore the studio space by taking a brief time away from music. He advised him to create a horror movie so B that one day the brothers Sid would review it. Alice Cooper was very confused by this advice and spent the next couple weeks in deep thought. After some serious consideration he agreed to the terms and signed on to star in the lesser known low budget wolfman flick "Monster Dog." After the first day of shooting he knew one thing...that he had made a terrible terrible mistake. After the filming finally wrapped up 2 days later he ran down the street screaming "he's gone the evils gone from here!" To this day when asked about Monster Dog in any interview he will either deny it's existence, or claim that it was really his twin brother Dallas Cooper who went behind his back and starred in the movie.

Monster Dog starts off with a music video starring Vince Raven (Alice Cooper) who clearly didn't stray too far from his actual life. He plays a big shot rock star that wants to shoot a new music video, but wants to do it in his old hometown. Upon arrival they're stopped in their 1975 rapist van at a road block with the towns hillbilly sheriff. They're told the sheriff reckons a pack of wild dogs is loose and on a flesh eating spree. These dogs have taken out 6 of the local bumpkins within the past few days. However Alice Cooper isn't afraid, he's got a low budget music video to shoot. Once they arrive you pretty much figure out exactly whats going to happen for the remainder of the film. Yeah you got it, Cooper's really a rock star wolfman fighting against his natural urges to be a werewolf. When he finally morphs into the wolf it was pure bliss. The wolfman was just a big furry plastic head you never see from the neck down. His crew of flunkies do what they can to stop the chaos, but unfortunately Alice already said "look at the scoreboard it's chaos!" There's no way you're coming out victorious against Alice Cooper, especially in his werewolf form.

In all honesty Monster Dog was absolutely horrific in the greatest way possible. It's jam packed with horrid acting, a nightmare script, and special effects Sid could have outdone in his science fair project days. Despite waiting til the last minute from goofing off and numerous 7-11 trips. Honestly this movie was an Alice Cooper away from being showcased on MST3K. We've always thought Alice Cooper was one interesting character, but after this he will be held in a much higher regard for his efforts in the art of B. We also came to find this movie was the prelude to the Woody Award winning Werewolf. Yes it's true. One night after Joe Estevez polished off his 3rd bottle of John Daniels(Jacks cheaper version) in 1994, he came across Monster Dog on his special pay channels the cable company forgot to shut off after the free sample week. He sat in astonishment for the next hour and a half in his stain soak blue robe with nothing on underneath. As soon as the film finished he took out a cocktail napkin and wrote the script for Werewolf in 17 minutes. The rest is history, which is why Monster Dog earns itself a very strong 4 star rating. Just in time for a nice Halloween time viewing.