The Pack
Tags: tragedy, violence, horror, murder

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a farmer hearing sounds and going out to his barn to investigate. A short time later his wife awakens from her easy chair by the fireplace to see his cigarette burning in the ashtray but he is not in the house. She goes to find him and hears a noise in the barn. As she enters the barn, she is killed by an unknown creature.
The next morning a neighboring farmer, Adam (Jack Campbell) finds several of his sheep dead after having their throats ripped out by a creature in the night. Meanwhile, his wife Carla (Anna Lise Phillips) is working in her veterinary clinic and hears the report of the dead farmers on the radio. She snaps off the radio and sends her son Henry (Hamish Phillips) out to play. The daughter Sophie (Katie Moore) is on the roof of the vet clinic laying in a lounger talking to her boyfriend on the phone. Carla sits at her desk and picks up the overdue $435 phone bill and angrily calls her daughter Sophie, who ignores her prompting her mother to yank the cord out of the wall. Sophie storms into the clinic and argues with her mother about farm life being solitary confinement and how they should move into the city, Carla counters this by suggesting she help out around the farm or get a job to help pay the phone bill. Henry comes in to let his mother know the man is back. Carla sends the kids in the house and calls for her husband over the walkie talkie.
The man turns out to be a bank manager and during the course of conversation it is revealed that their payments are in arrears and the farm is being foreclosed despite Carla's clinic being a new source of income. The snide and sarcastic bank manager tells them they can take the reduced amount of $200,000 for their barn or be forced out in 48 hours, but Adam refuses to sell as the only reason they are unprofitable is because the sheep keep being attacked and stating that they will never have to leave. The manager drives off and stops on the side of the road to urinate, but before he can return to his car he is promptly attacked by a pack of wild dogs that viciously tear his flesh and drag him down the hill.
Later that night the family is having a quiet evening. Sophie, who is in the shower, does not notice the shadow of a dog in the hall. When Carla and Henry go into the basement to change a fuse and she jump-scares him and teases him about being afraid. Adam goes outside to start the generator, when he realizes the family dog is missing. Calling for it, he walks to the edge of the forest and sees a few sets of yellow eyes staring back at him. He backs away from the forest as howling begins and large shadows start to pursue him, and rushes back into the house just ahead of the dogs who try to get into the house.
When he goes to get his rifle he notices that there are only two bullets and questions Carla about it who tells them that they have been going missing, although it was revealed earlier in the film to be Henry who is taking them, Carla calls the police and tells them there is a break-in while Adam trains his rifle on the door and shoots through it hitting the dog. He opens the door to see if it is dead and is attacked by it, and accidentally fires off his other round before dropping his rifle which skids out the door. Carla grabs a weapon and begins to beat the dog. A police officer arrives at the farmhouse to investigate and attempts to radio in to the police precinct. He gets out of his vehicle and as he approaches the house the pack viciously attacks him before dragging his body into the woods. Adam goes out to his pick-up truck and lets the family know it is safe to come out so they can escape in the truck. Just then a dog leaps through his window breaking the glass and biting him. He hits the gas and his trucks leaps forward plowing into the police car totaling both vehicles.
Carla hides Sophie and Henry in the pantry while an injured Adam goes out to the vet clinic to get additional ammo as Carla began storing the ammo in her office to stop them going missing. Adam gets into the clinic and finds there are only a few shells left. He hears a noise in the other room and creeps over to find a wild dog eating the animals in cages. Sophie begins calling him over the walkie talkie which alerts the dog to his presence and it attacks Adam who fights it off with the rifle. Meanwhile, another wild dog is trying to get into the closet and attack the kids but Carla stabs it with a kitchen knife and it runs off. They make an alternate plan to climb up onto the roof of the vet clinic. Adam goes first to snipe the dogs while the kids stealthily go through the interior dog run. Henry stops to collect some unused rifle shells he has hidden there. Carla has been making firebombs from flammable liquid she had in the house to throw at the dogs while the kids run across the last patch of lawn to the ladder. The leader of the pack sees Carla and runs toward her. As she runs back for the house she sees it closing in on her. She goes to the pick-up truck instead and climbs through the back window to get the tire iron and beat it. She fights it off long enough to get the truck door open. As it leaps through the window and she slams the door, closing the dog inside. She hides under the truck but is soon dragged out by the dog. As she sits at the side of the truck with the crowbar still in hand, the lead dog approaches her slowly snarling and showing his teeth. As he is about to attack, Adam appears on the roof of the truck, and shoots him in the head.
As day breaks the bloodied exhausted parents lead the children back to the house and the family dog comes bounding out of nowhere to join them. The camera pans above the house and through the forest before a close up of a dark cave entrance. A pair of yellow eyes like the ones earlier in the film, peer out from the darkness before the end credits begin.

Review: The Pack, released in 1977 with a cast of solid but not-all-that-well-known actors, is the inevitable killer dogs variation of the theme.
Surprisingly, the film proved to be very well-made, with lots of excitement and some skillfully edited dog attacks, plus an unexpected injection of humour (sample: R.G Armstrong has a hilarious line, commenting upon the disappearance of an overweight tourist: "if he had any sense, he'd climb a tree.
That is if he can get his fat ass off the ground!")Marine biologist Jerry (Joe Don Baker) has been working on a remote island called Seal Island, where he has begun to build a house for himself, his girlfriend Millie (Hope Alexander-Willis), and their children from previous marriages.
Things get awkward for the holiday-makers and the residents when they learn that a pack of dogs - mostly pets abandoned by tourists at the end of the season - are roaming the island.
One by one, the people on Seal Island are hunted by the bloodthirsty canines and torn apart, leading the survivors to barricade themselves inside a building where they attempt to survive until the arrival of the weekly ferry.Writer-director Robert Clouse (of Enter the Dragon fame) has fashioned a genuinely exciting story here.
The dog attack sequences are very well handled and seem realistic, which adds to the film's excitement (in films like Nightwing, the animal attacks looked too fake, too funny, to be frightening...
but not so in The Pack!) If you're searching for a rampaging animal movie that is actually good, then look no further..
On a small tourist island, a handful of people is besieged by a pack of wild dogs.
There is no hesitation on veteran action director Robert Clouse's part to show the dogs being killed in equal measure.
Joe Don Baker stars, and several familiar faces, among them Richard Schull, Bibe Besch and R.G. Armstrong, provide strong support.
Thanks to uncaring tourists, a pack of wild dogs has slowly been building on Seal Island.
beast war against the island's inhabitants led by marine biologist Jerry (Joe Don Baker, who qualifies as both man and beast).
A pretty darn exciting horror-action flick from director Robert Clouse that re-teams him with Baker after the equally entertaining GOLDEN NEEDLES (1974).
Baker is affable, but the real stars here are the pack of canine characters, led by a mongrel that probably spent his later years terrified of mono filament line.
There are also some dopey bits like people always running outside and the characters not being attacked as they carry a dead body out of the house because, as Baker puts it, "we have torches." I'm surprised at how much the recent killer dog flick THE BREED (2006) ripped this one off..
It takes place on a resort island where the year round residents, and some visitors, now have to deal with the problem of a ferocious dog pack that is the result of vacationers having adopted these dogs for the summer and then abandoned them.
The animal action is first rate - the principal trainer is Karl Lewis Miller, an old hand at that kind of thing for many years, and he gets utterly convincing performances from the canine stars, especially the primary antagonist, a mangy mongrel, and the pathetic straggler of the group who we see abandoned near the beginning of the movie.
The human cast does not fare badly, either, with the ever solid Joe Don Baker, playing a marine biologist, as the kind of hero you can root for.
(Of course, there are also the standard characters in this thing who you pretty much *hope* are going to come to a bad end.) Hope Alexander-Willis is his appealing leading lady, and the supporting cast features such reliable performers as Richard B.
"The Pack" is perhaps the best Killer Dog movie ever made.
The Killer Shrews, Savage Harvest, Day of the Triffids, and a hundred other films all used this same premise, some with greater results than others."The Pack" is one of the better ones.
But lots of menace, as a pack of dogs terrorize people on an island.What makes "The Pack" a cut above other films in its genre is that the dogs aren't played as blood-thirsty monsters.
In addition to a few genuine scares, this movie also has heart, and last scene will make you cry.Joe Don Baker, Richard B.
Shull, R.G. Armstrong and Bibi Besch are among the cast, and the performances are good, but the scene stealer is the lead dog, who's manic, vicious, lethal, and still an animal, a living creature, not just a monster."The Pack" was directed by Robert Clouse, who directed Bruce Lee in "Enter The Dragon."..
The basic premise of this underrated 70's "Nature revolting against Humanity" flick truly fascinated me, because I've always been concerned about how it would affect dogs' most primitive instincts if they were to be abandoned by their owners.
Personally I think this is a terrific outline for a low-budget horror movie, and in the competent hands of director Robert Clouse ("Enter the Dragon", "The Ultimate Warrior") it became a magnificently atmospheric and suspenseful thriller, with some very memorable moments and good acting performances.
The events take place on a small vacation resort called Seal Island, where tourists mainly come for to fish and to enjoy nature.
The animal eventually bites through his leash and joins an entire pack of abandoned and already bewildered of dogs, led by a vicious and truly menacing crossover breed.
This is easily one of the best "killer-dog" movies I've ever seen, and it benefices from a whole lot of secondary aspects like the isolated and claustrophobic island location, the detailed character drawings of the locals and the fact that the emphasis lies on tension instead of on graphic massacres.
Joe Don Baker gives a terrific performance as the marine biologist who eventually also turns into a loud-barking pack-leader himself.
The dogs  and then particularly the leader of the pack  are impressively scary, so big kudos to the people who trained them.
On an isolated island,a group of vacationers are trapped by a bloodthirsty pack of rabid dogs.After a fierce storm destroys communication with the island and no help coming for several days,the terrorize travelers struggle to survive the increasingly violent attacks by the ravenous canines.Very well-made and suspenseful animal attack flick with some genuinely intense dog attacks.There is truly nail-biting siege of the house and Joe Don Baker locked inside the cabin and fighting with rabid canines.The scene where Lois is attacked by the pack of dogs whilst being locked in a small Volkswagen predates Lewis Teague's "Cujo".The vacationers cruelly abandon their pets and it's time for dogs to get some bloody revenge!8 out of 10.One of the most underrated horror movies of late 70's..
The Pack is certainly the only film I've seen about a pack of wild dogs terrorising a group of humans.
However, in general; Robert Clouse's film just doesn't capitalise on its positive elements, which leaves it all feeling more than a little bit flat.
The plot centres on a group of people on Seal Island, whose serene existence is interrupted by a pack of wild dogs.
These dogs are, naturally, very hungry; and it's not long before they realise that the island features a plentiful food supply, and unfortunately for the people there - they are it.The film is at its best when the dogs are on the attack and the director delights in showing them looking rabid and hungry...but unfortunately, they never really look too threatening when they're not tearing into soft-top cars or breaking through windows.
Veteran actor Joe Don Baker takes the lead role, and does well in providing the offbeat hero as the man doesn't particularly look like someone who you would expect to be fighting off a pack of hungry dogs.
The island location provides a good setting for a film like this, though, and the way that the characters are isolated adds a little extra terror.
Horror movie about a pack of neglected dogs who go wild and start attacking people on an island.
The movie stars Joe Don Baker and a cast of somewhat familiar faces like R.G. Armstrong and the guy who played Paul on Cheers.
What works best is the location filming and the use of real dogs.
I know that might sound weird but today everything is CGI fakery so I always find the use of "real" refreshing when watching older movies like this.
Enjoying a weekend getaway, a group of high-society friends arrive on a secluded island getaway for a vacation finds the entire island is overrun by wild dogs left behind over the years and turned into vicious, hungry kills forcing them to battle the dogs to get away alive.This one here wasn't all that bad and has some good things about it.
The idea of having this be based around the dogs that have now turned feral and wild out in the wilderness makes for a pretty realistic scenario for this type of story, and is handled in a logical manner with them simply looking for nourishment rather than attacking for any kind of mutation-based change or other forms of alterations that have been attempted over the years.
A later chase scene through the woods and out to a large rocky outcropping on the top of a cliff is another rather enjoyable action-packed chase with the dogs continually closing in until the final encounter out by the sea, and there's even more great fun to be had here with their attempts at stopping the pack from them storming their hideout in the rain to the failed attempt at running them over with the car and the absolutely crazy attack on their fortress as the pack breaks in at several spots forcing them into some inventive and fun barricading themes that are part of what makes this so much fun.
However, that also brings out the film's single biggest flaw with the realistic use of the dogs here making this one incredibly hard to sit through which happens with all the brutality inflicted not only by them but also against them.
The scenes of the dogs being whacked with baseball bats, clubbed with pieces of logs and being chased around a small lot in a car that's barely missing their legs and snapping jaws is quite hard to watch seeing that the dogs are that close to being in real danger makes for quite a troubling watch for those that have a sensitivity to watching dogs in peril.
Great killer dog movie!.
Robert Clouse's "The Pack" is mostly your usual killer pets movie.
In this case, people buy dogs at the pound, and leave them on a vacation island.
While most of the cast does the sorts of things that we expect in one of these movies, Joe Don Baker is quite cool as the leader.
The people behind the camera probably fixed up the main dog so that he would look more menacing; I mean, I've never seen any mutt looking like that.I notice that this movie was filmed in Bodega Bay, California.
Is every movie filmed there going to feature non-human fauna attacking people?!
A woodsy island with a few locals that's occasionally visited by tourists is endangered by a pack of about fifteen feral dogs.
They're mostly dogs tourists bought and brought to the island to keep them company for a vacation, then left behind.
The movie might have been better if they picked wilder-looking or more muscular dogs, or ones that could act meaner.The wild dogs are first discovered when the dog belonging to Joe Don Baker's marine biologist character is attacked by the leader, and Baker spots it.
However, it becomes apparent it's one of many, and unfortunately Baker's CB radio isn't working, and a ferry isn't due for four more days.For those into gore, not much of the attacks are shown, and dead people are never shown (though people are killed), only some dead dogs are seen after being shot or run over.
The 1977 effort "The Pack" was not the first B movie to deal with a pack of wild dogs with their sights fixed on killing humans - in the previous year, the movie "Dogs" had the same premise.
It looks a lot better, from the locations to the production values, though director Robert Clouse does make sure to make the movie not look *too* slick.
Nature versus Man: Joe Don Baker against The Pack!.
The Pack a.k.a. The Long Dark Night (1977) was another one of those "nature rebels against man" films that were cranked out during the seventies.
This time it's dogs and that's where this movie went to.
Joe Don Baker and some residents of a Pacific Northwestern town must contend with a pack of mean and wild dogs who decide that they've had it with man.
Can Joe Don Baker and the beleaguered residents ward off the mangy mutts throughout the long dark night?It's a real cheesy movie that's no great shakes.
Joe Don Baker marks his territory all over this lumpy, when-animal-attack howler.
I see him as a big, jowly, bloodhound with a little bulldog mixed in for added heft.I'll admit, what I really wanted out of this movie was to see Joe Don on all fours growling through spittle-flecked jaws as he faces down the leader of the pack over a steaming fresh kill.
Instead what you get is a tepid when-animal-attack flick.The setting is Seal Island, which seems to be off the coast of Oregon or something.
Then, when you've had your way with this poor, canine prostitute, you abandon it on Seal Island.Is it any wonder that these unfortunate dogs immediately go feral and band together in a wild, howling pack?
Instead, it's up to real men like Jerry (Baker) and Clyde (Richard Shull) to stop these rampaging dogs.
Included in this group are the banker's mistress Marge (Bibi Besch) and his son Tommy (Paul Willson, "Paul" from Cheers).Enough already, let the dog attack action begin, right?
The leader of the dog pack does turn in a decent performance as a frighteningly rabid cur.
THE PACK is a pretty good '70's animals attack movie.
Joe Don Baker is a marine biologist who has to fight off a crazed pack of hounds left behind by uncaring vacationers.
It's funny that there was a time in America where you could be a Joe Don Baker and get the girl and save the day.There's some good jolts but the dogs aren't that scary.
THE PACK (1977) **1/2 Joe Don Baker, Hope Alexander-Willis, Richard B.
Affective old school horror film with a simple premise - isolated island community faces a new danger when a pack of ravenous dogs begins attacking the populace, including a vacationing bunch of bankers (read into that as you will metaphor of dog-eat-dog world) leads to a countdown to a face-off in man vs.
***SPOILERS*** Very underrated and almost forgotten movie about a pack of feral and wild dogs taking over an island of the coast of California tearing apart and eating anyone, man or beast, that they come in contact with.
It's up to marine biologist Jerry Parker, "Big Joe" Don Baker, to put an end to the carnage that the wild dogs are responsible for on Seal Island with time running out before he and what's left of the island's human as well as animal population are killed and devoured by them.
This all happened so innocently with the people vacationing on Seal Island leaving their pet dogs there thinking that they'll find both food and a home there; Which for the most part turned out to be those people living there.
Not once realizing that the dogs will resort to their primitive and wolf-like instincts and form packs in order to survive which in fact is what they did.Shocking scenes of man women as well as animals attacked and killed by this pack of some two dozen wild dogs with Jerry trying to get help from the coast with his radio transmitter knocked out by a winter storm.
Lead by this top dog mongrel the pack soon overwhelms the few humans on the island leaving it all up to Jerry and Seal Island's hotel manager Hardiman, Richard B, Shull,to take them on with barley their bear hands after they run out of the little ammunition, shotgun shells, that they had with them.***SPOILERS*** Much like the 1959 movie "The Killer Shrews" the film "The Pack" had the mad and rabid dogs killed not by starving them to death but by roasting them alive in Hardiman's hotel that Jerry, using himself as bait, trapped them in.
With all the blood violence and carnage in the movie the final scene will definitely tug on your heartstrings with Jerry who barley survived the dog attacks sticking his hand out in friendship to the last surviving member-scared shivering and cute little mutt-of the dog pack who only joined it when it was abandoned by its master in him feeling that it had a chance to survive in the wild..
A pack of vicious dogs who have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves by visiting vacationers terrorize the residents on a small island.
There's one scene where the dogs are chasing after the humans in slow motion and all I could think of was that they were running for dinner time.
Joe Don Baker's character as the marine biologist is really made to look as a complete idiot.
For a low-budget 70's action film, this is very well technically made, as it looks like it could've come out a few years ago.
Veteran actor Baker holds things together real well, and the dogs are freaky.
The attack scenes aren't too nasty, kept to just the dogs filmed at a distance pouncing on a victim.