The Plague Dogs (film)

Rowf, a labrador-mix, and Snitter, a smooth fox terrier, are two of many dogs used for experimental purposes at an animal research facility in the Lake District of north-western England. Snitter has had his brain surgically experimented upon-(leaving the top of his head scarred and covered with bandages) while Rowf has been drowned and resuscitated repeatedly. One evening, Snitter squeezes under the netting of his cage and into Rowf's, where they discover his cage is unlatched. They explore the facility in order to escape until they sneak into the incinerator, where they are nearly killed before finally escaping.

Initially relieved and eager to experience their new freedom, the dogs are soon faced not only with the realities of life in the wild but with another more terrifying realization—they are being hunted by their former captors. They come to befriend the Tod, a nameless Geordie-accented fox who goes by the local slang term for a wild fox. The Tod teaches them to hunt in the wild in exchange for a share of their kills. Snitter hopes for a new home as he once had a master, but after accidentally killing a man by stepping onto the trigger of his shotgun as he climbs up onto him, Snitter loses hope. As time passes the two dogs grow emaciated, having to steal more and more food while still avoiding capture. The Tod is also proven to be difficult for the dogs to understand and cooperate. When the Tod finds a nest of eggs, he eats them all himself, enraging Rowf. The Tod himself disapproves of their risky behaviour, like killing domestic sheep grazing on the local hills. They go their separate ways for a time, but the Tod eventually returns to assist them by distracting a lab-hired gunman who then falls to his death. The three reconcile and wander about aimlessly, with the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment and the media roped into the pursuit, driven by rumours of the two dogs carrying bubonic plague and killing humans and sheep.

The Tod parts company with the two dogs after leading them to a train pulled by River Irt on the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway. While the dogs escape on the train, the Tod sacrifices his life distracting the humans in order to allow Snitter and Rowf to escape. Thanks to the Tod's distraction, Snitter and Rowf arrive at the coastal village of Ravenglass, but upon departing the train, the two dogs are spotted by an RAF Sea King helicopter and are pursued by it until they reach the shoreline and can run no further. As armed troops approach and prepare to shoot the dogs, Snitter looks out over the water and claims to see an island - he jumps into the sea and begins to swim to it. Rowf is hesitant to follow due to his conditioned fear of water, but his greater fear of the gunmen drives him to jump in as well and catch up with Snitter. Two gunshots are fired at the dogs but seemingly miss; immediately a white mist envelops the pair, and the humans and the helicopter disappear. The dogs swim through the mist towards the island Snitter claims to see but Rowf can't spot, until, at last, Snitter begins to doubt that "there is any island" and he stops paddling, losing hope. Rowf, however, claims to finally spot the island and urges Snitter to continue.

The dogs venture forth heading further into the mist, en route to what maybe is an island possibly waiting for them on the other side of it. The fates of Rowf and Snitter are left on an ambiguous note, as the sea they are swimming through is engulfed in an even thicker layer of mist. The following moment segues to the reveal of an island visible in the distance on the horizon. It is left uncertain if the body of land shown actually exists and is really there or if it is just an illusion with symbolic meaning.

The film was animated in both Britain and San Francisco, California between 1979 and 1982. British animators such as Arthur Humberstone, Alan Simpson, George Jackson, and Colin White came from the unit that had previously worked on Watership Down. The San Francisco crew included Brad Bird, Phil Robinson, and Retta Scott, a "Disney veteran who had animated the vicious hunting dogs in Bambi."[2]

Goldcrest Films invested £900,000 in the film and earned £308,000, losing the company £595,000.[3][4] Jake Eberts who helped finance this and Watership Down thought the filmmakers made two errors: the film was downbeat with an unhappy ending, unlike the book, and was made without a distributor (an arrangement was made with Embassy but then the filmmakers wanted to re-negotiate and Embassy pulled out while United Artists became the film's UK distributor).[5]

The film had a test screening in Seattle on 17 December 1983. Rosen had difficulty in finding distributors for the film, and it entered a limited release in the U.S. on 9 January 1985.[2] On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 63% based on reviews from eight critics, with an average rating of 7.3/10.[7] Janet Maslin, in her 1985 New York Times review of the U.S. release, praised the visual style: "Martin Rosen treats his Plague Dogs almost as though it were live action. He varies the scenery and the camera angles imaginatively [...] Mr. Rosen's direction is quite ingenious, much more so than Mr. Adams's story."[8]

There are two versions of the film: the original 103-minute UK theatrical release and the edited 86-minute US version. Most edits in the shorter cut were removed to reduce running time but one was for its shocking content: After the hired gunman Ackland falls to his death from a steep crag from which he was attempting to shoot the dogs, a military helicopter flies over the snow-covered crags and valleys and the soldiers in the helicopter find the body ripped to shreds, implying that the starving dogs had eaten the corpse.

The full theatrical cut of the film was first released on a UK rental-only, PG-certificate VHS by Thorn EMI in December 1983;[9] only around 8,000 copies of this version were made. On 22 August 1988, it was commercially released on VHS in the UK by Warner Home Video.[10] In 1986, the shorter cut was released on US VHS by Charter Entertainment.[11]

In 2002, Anchor Bay released a Region 2 DVD version of the film, but it contained the US recut. Soon afterwards, the Dutch budget label, Indies Home Entertainment, released a Region 2 disc which also contained the US cut but includes forced Dutch subtitles. In 2004, a DVD version of the film was released by Hollywood DVD in the UK with the US cut. Trinity Home Entertainment released their DVD in the United States the same year; Trinity tried to get the full cut, but when they were unable to obtain it, they ended up settling with using the truncated US version. Trinity's DVD was re-released by Phase 4 Films in 2010.

In 2005, Australian distributor Umbrella Entertainment, released both cuts of the film on Region 4 DVD[12] (they also released the full theatrical cut of Watership Down), sourced from Martin Rosen's private print. The same print was later released on Region 2 DVD in the UK by Optimum Releasing in 2008.[13]

In 2017, Shout! Factory announced that they had acquired the rights to the film in the United States, and that they would release the film for the first time on Blu-ray on 24 February 2018 under their Shout Select line.[14] In late 2017, Shout! Factory announced that they had delayed the film's Blu-ray release to work with director Martin Rosen in hopes of releasing the original 103-minute version of the film instead of the 86-minute version.[15] In September 2018, Shout! Factory announced that the original 103-minute version of the film would be released on Blu-ray on 15 January 2019.[16] The 2019 release includes both a 2K restored version of the original 103-minute version of the film and the 86-minute version of the film, as well as an interview with director Martin Rosen regarding the production of the film.[17] Screenbound Films also released a Blu-ray of the film in the UK on 10 August 2020, likewise containing both the theatrical and extended cuts.[18]

It was also featured on The Criterion Channel as part of their arthouse animation lineup.[19][20]

Wikiquote has quotations related to The Plague Dogs (film).

• Trailer on YouTube
• Original press kit photos
• The Plague Dogs at IMDb
• The Plague Dogs at Box Office Mojo
• The Plague Dogs at Rotten Tomatoes