Dogs of Hell

Amateurish, bloody, dimly-lit North Carolina production has the inimitable Earl Owensby as a mumbling, expressionless sheriff who must protect a town of unsuspecting yokels from an onslaught by a pack of aggressive rottweilers, trained by the government as special operations assassins, accidentally set free after the convoy transporting them overturns.

Filmed in 3-D, director Keeter (a frequent Owensby collaborator, e.g. "Wolfman") builds an effective (and bloody) climax as the rabid hounds systematically corral the occupants of a luxury country club then treat themselves to the buffet. Camera angles framed for the purpose of accentuating the 3-D effects obviously do little when you're watching this on your regular TV-set (as I did), and the action is at times so cloaked in darkness (not to mention the incoherent dialogue) that it's often difficult to follow what's happening.

If you accept that the flaws are attributable to its independent production values scale, and yet despite those constraints there's plenty of gory attack scenes and expensive looking explosions for those interested, then you might be persuaded to watch "Rottweiler" (aka "Dogs from Hell") at least once. Hard to locate, I got my copy as a VHS reject during the DVD revolution and I suspect the ex-rental market is the only place you'll find a copy, until someone enterprising (perhaps Owensby himself) decides to unlock the 3-D potential and re-release on DVD.

Dogs of Hell (1983)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The evil U.S. government have created Rottweilers that are trained to attack and kill humans. A truckload of them are going through a small town when the truck crashes and sends the dogs on a killing spree, which has Sheriff Hank Willis (Earl Owensby) having to take control.

This here was the first of six pictures that Owensby would produce in 3D but to my knowledge there has never been a home video of this version. Most copies out there are from the video and are full screen and don't look the greatest so it's hard to judge the effects obviously but at the same time there were very few things that "jumped" at the screen outside an early scene involving a dart.

As far as the rest of the movie goes, it's really no different than films like THE PACK or DOGS. This one here contains a certain regional atmosphere, which is a plus and it's always fun seeing that charm of Owensby but outside of this there's really not too much here to recommend. The biggest problem is that the film has the majority of the attacks off the screen so we get the cheap effect of a dog growling and then the aftermath of the attack.

DOGS OF HELL has a certain low-budget appeal but there's just not enough here to make it interesting enough to recommend. That is unless you're a fan of Owensby.

yup... it's kind of fun to watch "Dogs of Hell" if you like to watch movies that were originally intended to be in 3D and pretend to be wow-ed by the scenes where they intend to shoot, throw, or point things out at you. Originally released as "Rottweiler" in 1982, you can see how the entire movie is relying on the fact that at some point they're gonna throw something towards the camera. As I watched it I thought after the first hour that I'd rented a movie called "Mystery Dog" because you never actually saw what was attacking these 80's act-bots (so amazing how they could manage to have such 2-dimensional actors in a 3D movie). And the dogs you eventually see look like your neighbor's dogs do when the kids tease it...hardly a fright. But it wasn't as though the film were a real disappointment as I hadn't expected much. The highlight of the movie for me was when the sherriff would shoot the dogs with his big ol' 44. You'd see the picture cut away from a snarling rottweiler to a cheap, paper machete casting of a rottweiler's head that would then explode throwing bologna, chocolate milk, stale beer and whatever else they decided would look like dog brains all over the place. Yup. "Dogs of Hell" was a moderately humorous way to neglect quality time and a gem if you're into watching obscure movies that don't diserve to be remembered just because you know they wont be.

An unbelievably bad effort by independent producer Earl Owensby, not just for the fact it rips off "The Pack" and "Dogs". It's unbelievable in its ineptness, starting with photography so poor (especially during the night sequences) that the movie looks like it was shot in 8 MM. The attack sequences are very lazy - mostly we just HEAR the attacks instead of seeing them, and when we DO see them, it's only for a split second. We do see the aftermath of the attacks, though the poor makeup jobs aren't any compensation. The main problem with the movie is that it's simply BORING for the most part, devoting most of the running time to showing these country folk talking to each other and going around the area. I can't see ANY reason why this could be of interest to anyone, even if someone happened to star or work on the movie. If you want to see a killer dog movie, see "The Pack". Heck, even see "Dogs" over this; though it's not very good, it's a masterpiece next to "Dogs Of Hell"!

This movie is so stupid. I went through a lot to try to find this movie. I only could rent it anyway. Maybe it was just for rental because it was too bad enough to keep on the market for people to buy. You could not even see the dogs killing people as if they would switch the camera every minute. Being a horror movie genre fan, you would think the title had a good significance as to why I would want to see this movie really bad. I wonder are there any other killer dog movies that beat this one.