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 experimented upon 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 reluctantly befriend Tod, a Geordie-accented fox, in order to obtain food in the wild - they initially hunt domestic sheep grazing on the local hills. 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 assists them by distracting a lab-hired gunman who then falls to his death. As the three wander about aimlessly, the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment and the media are roped into the pursuit, driven by rumors of the two dogs carrying bubonic plague and murdering humans and sheep.

The Tod parts with the two dogs as the pursuers close in, telling them he's got "a few more tricks" up his sleeve, where he is quickly caught and seemingly killed. Thanks to the fox's distraction, Snitter and Rowf manage to sneak onto a train on the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway.

The train arrives at the coastal village of Ravenglass where 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 fear of water/drowning, 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 have doubts as to "if 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 swim onwards through the mist, and their fate is left ambiguous. The silhouette of an island is shown during the credits.

• John Hurt as Snitter
• Christopher Benjamin as Rowf
• James Bolam as The Tod
• Nigel Hawthorne as Dr. Boycott
• Warren Mitchell as Harry Tyson / Wag
• Bernard Hepton as Stephen Powell
• Brian Stirner as Laboratory Assistant
• Penelope Lee as Lynn Driver
• Geoffrey Matthews as Farmer
• Barbara Leigh-Hunt as Farmer's Wife
• John Bennett as Don
• John Franklyn-Robbins as Dennis Williamson
• Bill Maynard as Editor
• Malcolm Terris as Robert Lindsay
• Judy Geeson as Pekingese
• Philip Locke as Civil Servant #1
• Brian Spink as Civil Servant #2
• Tony Church as Civil Servant #3
• Anthony Valentine as Civil Servant #4
• William Lucas as Civil Servant #5
• Dandy Nichols as Phyllis Dawson
• Rosemary Leach as Vera Dawson
• Patrick Stewart as Major John Awdry
• Percy Edwards as Animal Vocalization

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."[1]

Goldcrest Films invested £900,000 in the film invested £903,000 in the film and earned £308,000, losing the company £595,000.[2][3] 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).[4]

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.[1] Currently, the film does not have enough professional reviews to reach a consensus on Rotten Tomatoes. Based on the seven reviews available, it has an approval rating of 57% with an average rating of 7.00/10 and an audience score of 90% based on 3,082 votes.[6] 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."[7]

There are two versions of the film: An 86-minute version and a 103-minute version. The only country that offered the full-length film on DVD was Australia[8] until it was released in the UK on 7 January 2008.[9]

While many of the missing scenes in the 86 minute cut were mostly removed to reduce running time, one scene taken from the book was removed because of 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 original VHS release of the full theatrical cut of the film was released by Thorn Productions in 1982. Only around 8,000 copies of this version were made. A sell through edition of the tape was later released in the UK by Warner Home Video. The 86 minute cut was released on VHS by Charter Entertainment.

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 Enterainment 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 the full theatrical cut of the film as well as the truncated version on Region 4 DVD (they also released the full theatrical cut of Watership Down), sourced from Martin Rosen's private print. This was probably the only full cut of the film in existence aside from the rare Thorn and Warner Home Video VHSes and the original master. The same print was later released on Region 2 DVD in the UK by Optimum Releasing in 2008.

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 the Shout Selects.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14]

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• The Plague Dogs at IMDb
• The Plague Dogs at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Plague Dogs at Box Office Mojo
• Press kit photographs from The Plague Dogs