‘Rabid Dogs’ aka ‘ Cani arrabiati’ (1974) - Mario Bava.

The greatly revered genre movie mastermind, Mario Bava expertly fashions an exhilarating, whippet lean, madhouse mean, frequently exasperating kidnap yarn, enlivened by yet another towering performance of masculine toxicity from muscular mancake, George ‘Grim Reaper’ Eastman. 'Rabid Dogs' is a barnacle-tight masterclass of dynamically economical film-making, while the familiar milieu initially appears rather pedestrian, like all especially nimble-fingered magicians, maestro Bava has more than ONE ace up his voluminous sleeve! Claustrophobically set within the increasingly cloying confines of a sweltering automobile, a playfully mean-spirited, Bava evilly ratchets up the stifling tension right until the infamously twisted climax! Rabid Dogs excitingly maintains a giddy pace, each sudden outburst of feral violence jolting you sharply out of your B-Movie comfort zone, and the rewarding lack of narrative digressions brings a disturbing intimacy to this nihilistic road movie!   

Bava's brutally compact, 'Rabid Dogs' is terse, ruthlessly unsentimental Italian action cinema at its very best, turbocharged by vivid, animal-like performances, and an entirely complimentary score by versatile composer, Stelvio Cipriani, who lends his not inconsiderable musical talent to this darkly fascinating descent into the seamier vectors of the criminal mind! Mario Bava was a crackerjack photographer, the absolute master of mood, in-camera trickery, and exemplary atmosphere-building in Gothic cinema; his filmmaking prowess remained undiminished to the very end, since his ferocious crime thriller, 'Rabid Dogs' provides yet more indelible evidence of the influential Italian master's enviable legacy of cinematic genius! 

 

 

 

'For open box Blu-ray freaks only!'

'Gee! Boss!! I think her battery done expired, she don' do nuthin' but lie there like a broken pig!'

'The gun is a passport to your wife's goodies! You don' like it, take that up with the bullets I'll put in your greasy-lookin' melon!