The Plague Dogs

The Plague Dogs is a 1982 British-American animated adventure film, based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Richard Adams. It was written, directed and produced by Martin Rosen, who also directed Watership Down, the film adaptation of another novel by Adams. The Plague Dogs was produced by Nepenthe Productions; it was released by Embassy Pictures in the United States and by United Artists in the United Kingdom. The film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA for heavy animal cruelty themes, violent imagery, and emotionally distressing scenes. The Plague Dogs is the first non-family-oriented MGM animated film.
The film's story is centered on two dogs named Rowf and Snitter, who escape from a research laboratory in Great Britain. In the process of telling the story, the film highlights the cruelty of performing vivisection and animal research for its own sake (though Rosen said that this was not an anti-vivisection film, but an adventure), an idea that had only recently come to public attention during the 1960s–70s.
== Plot ==
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 The 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.
== Cast ==
* 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
== Production ==
Goldcrest Films invested £900,000 in the film.
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."
=== End theme ===
The theme song, "Time and Tide", was composed and sung by Alan Price.
The song, as well as dialogue from the film, was sampled by the Canadian industrial group Skinny Puppy for their anti-vivisection single, "Testure", from their 1988 album VIVIsectVI.
== Reception ==
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. 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." Currently the film has a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 5 reviews with an average rating of 7 out of 10.
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).
Goldcrest Films invested £903,000 in the film and earned £308,000, losing the company £595,000.
== Home media ==
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 until it was released in the UK on 7 January 2008.
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 falls to his death from a steep crag from which he was attempting to shoot the dogs, a helicopter flies over the snow-covered crags and valleys, finding 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 uncut 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. 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. 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. 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. Screenbound Films will also release a Blu-ray of the film in the UK on 13 July 2020.
== References ==
== External links ==
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* Press kit photographs from The Plague Dogs
Category:1982 films
Category:1982 animated films
Category:1980s adventure drama films
Category:1982 independent films
Category:British films
Category:British adventure drama films
Category:British animated films
Category:British independent films
Category:American films
Category:American adventure drama films
Category:1980s American animated films
Category:American independent films
Category:United Artists films
Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
Category:English-language films
Category:Animated drama films
Category:Animated films about dogs
Category:Animated films about foxes
Category:Animated films based on novels
Category:Films directed by Martin Rosen
Category:Films featuring anthropomorphic characters
Category:Films based on British novels
Category:Films about animal rights
Category:United Artists animated films
Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated films
Category:British survival films
Category:1982 drama films
Category:American survival films
Category:Rated PG-13