Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Micransix Crappy film

Peter Lorme Rabid Dogs, or Cani arrabbiati, (1974) is a cheesy but enthralling thriller. While it may not stand the test of time due to how unintentionally funny it can be, this film has some of the best pacing I have ever seen. There is not a single boring moment in the entirety of its runtime. Everything is consistently being pushed in one singular motion, with no signs of ever stopping. As goofy as this may sound, Italian is somehow the perfect language for this film to be set in. There's just something so entertaining about Italian men frustratingly yelling at each other. The acting is also quite believable, and after a while, it didn't even feel like they were even acting in the first place. Like I previously mentioned, the biggest flaw in this entire movie is how dated it feels. The tension is still high, but it is extremely over-the-top. Nevertheless, 'Rabid Dogs' is still an exhilarating watch.

ElijahCSkuggs Story revolves around a rag group of robbers who are on the run from the policia. Instead of making a calculated plan to steal their loot they instead go for the guns blazing type of robbery. Yay for us! They do get the cash but they end up losing one of their own, the driver. With their plan unraveling they need a car and need it fast, and that's when they take a driver-by hostage and force him to drive them to their safe-house. All the while they have another hostage in the back who's easy on the eyes. And to make matters worse the car they took hostage also has a sick young child in it. Three violent robbers and three civilians in a tiny car while running from the cops makes one entertaining picture.The film premise is cool but to truly make this film work is the characters. And all do their job very well. Each character is memorable and have their own important parts to the film. The bad guys in Rabid Dogs were extra memorable as they played their parts in an over the top way, with wild eyes, maniacal laughing and mannerisms and just an energy that this film needed to keep the viewer enthralled.Rabid Dogs was a film I've been meaning to see for a while and I'm glad I finally did. I always got it confused with Straw Dogs, which I still need to see as well. But Rabid Dogs was a cool flick that instantly became one of my favorites in the crime/thriller genre.

Jonny_Numb One of the macabre fascinations of the "survival horror" genre is to see how far filmmakers will push the moral and ethical sensibilities of the viewer--contrasted against movies where some otherworldly monster is the main adversary (thus clearly defining the bounds of "good" and "evil"), something like "Last House on the Left" is more prone to pushing our buttons because the perpetrators are as flesh-and-blood as any human being. "Rabid Dogs" (aka "Kidnapped") falls nicely into this tradition, and could be the finest variation on the formula next to Wes Craven's landmark. As directed by Mario Bava, the film is a visually stunning and uncomfortably claustrophobic tale of three criminals who commit an early-morning robbery and take three hostages (a female pedestrian, and the father of a sick child) and embark on a road trip wrought with sleaze and violence. While most renowned for his period horror films, Bava brings his own sense of visual flair to the proceedings (note how he films the deserted "farm" like a Gothic castle), contrasting panoramic shots of open, seemingly empty highways and countrysides with invasive, cramped close-ups of the criminals and hostages (in a way, we begin to also feel like captives in a hot car). Bava is surprisingly fearless in his portrayal of amorality, but the script actually develops both victim and victimized beyond the usual genre predictability--by the time we reach the film's closing twist, "Rabid Dogs" has made a stinging indictment against the greed and violence of the modern world, wrapped up in an unapologetically nihilistic package. It's a good, hard-hitting genre piece that may just make you think a little.

Woodyanders A trio of brutal criminals -- ruthless ringleader Doctor (superbly played by Maurice Poli), vicious psycho Thirty-Two (an incredibly feral and frightening performance by Luigi Montefiori), and his equally nasty buddy Blade (a memorably vile Aldo Caponi) -- barely manage to pull off a payroll heist. With one of their number shot down by the cops and every minute of the essence, the dangerous hoodlums are forced to take three hostages: middle-aged Riccardo (the excellent Riccardo Cuciolla), his sickly infant son, and lovely young lady Maria (the fetching Lea Lander). They all go on the lam in Riccardo's car. Director Mario Bava, working from a tight and bleak script by Alessandro Parenzo, relates the gripping story at a relentless barnstorming pace, does a masterful job of creating a hard, gritty, no-nonsense tone, and wrings plenty of nerve-wracking suspense from the claustrophobic confines of the constantly moving automobile. Moreover, Bava's trademark black humor is notably absent here; in its place there's a mean and unsparing nihilism that's a true savage and shocking wonder to behold. Stelvio Cipriani's thrilling, pulsating score further enhances the grungy excitement while Emilio Varriano's plain, yet polished cinematography likewise does the trick. Starting with a deliriously messy opening robbery sequence, given an extra stinging edge by several startling outbursts of raw, ugly violence, the extremely coarse dialogue, and the fierce sweltering hot summer day setting, and perfectly capped off with a great surprise bummer double twist ending, this simply stupendous crime thriller winner makes the grade with flying colors. Absolutely astounding.