Play Dead (1983)
2/10
A film of laughable ineptness
12 October 2016
Warning: Spoilers
I was looking forward to this one, as there was a picture of a dog with three heads on the cover. Wow, I thought, a dog with three heads. Cool. Unfortunately the dog in the film only has one head, and is less than convincing. This film looks like it had no budget at all and we frequently see the boom mike hovering about at the top of the screen. It's a vehicle for the ageing Yvonne De Carlo who keeps a dog which has the power to murder people. The background story is something ripped from Great Expectations (an unlikely source, I know).

The murders are all very tame and the most gore is blood running down someone's face. A woman is electrocuted in the bathtub, a man is strangled with a dog leash, a man is hit by a car. We are supposed to believe that a dog is capable of all of these murders. It's slow and very dull indeed and some scenes are downright laughable, especially the rubbish ending where Yvonne De Carlo is licked to death by the dog.

However as is the case in a lot of these type of films there are some good bits, one of these is the actor playing the old policeman who is pretty entertaining. In fact he is probably the only good actor in this film. The main female lead was appalling and screeched whenever someone died in so horrible a fashion I was forced to cover my ears to shield myself from the noise. Give this rubbish killer dog flick a miss unless you're a glutton for self-inflicted punishment.
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