Dogs (1976)

Director: Burt Brinckerhoff

Writer: O'Brian Tomalin

Composer: Alan Oldfield

Starring: David McCallum, Sandra McCabe, George Wyner, Eric Server, Linda Gray, Dean Santoro, Holly Harris, Sterling Swanson, Barry Greenberg

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Don't Pet Them ... Fear Them!

Plot: On the quiet campus of the remotely-located Southwestern University, something strange is happening. All of the dogs in the area, once loyal, gentle pets, are now banding together in wild packs and hunting down their former masters. Could the strange transformation have anything to do with the secret government experiments being conducted in the school's physics laboratory? More importantly, can the dogs be stopped before it's too late?

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? Nope.

Some things I observed...George Wyner is always fun to see in a picture...

I've never seen David McCallum with a beard and it takes a while to adjust to that...

Really, when you sit down to watch a movie like this you want pretty much one thing and one thing only, ferocious fucking dogs killing folks.  Unfortunately, most all of the attacks and kills are at night, barely visible and give little screen time to the actual dogs except when the humans are rolling around with their arms wrapped around one. There are a couple of exceptions.  The best one was at a dog show but even that didn't amount to anything more than dogs growling and showing their teeth and everyone running away.

The other was a shower attack when this nice young lady (no nudity here, kids) gets attacked by a vocal, grinning doberman.  Hell, even the big battle between the dogs and humans doesn't give much screen time to the little guys.  Because the attacks are rather tame and unimaginative (I'm sure they did the best they could under the circumstances) it feels like it's about one step up from being a TV movie of the week.  That's the biggest let down of all.  This dog has no bite.  THE PACK (1977) came out the next year and it looks more like what this one should have been.  I'm going to watch that one tonight. Stay away from DOGS. It might bore you to sleep.