input: I really enjoyed the reunion a lot! I would have rated it a 10 if they had had "Hassie" and "Little Luke". There wasn't even a mention of where they are today or why they didn't participate in the reunion. They were very popular characters and I think it was a mistake not to give an explanation about their lack of appearance.

Anyway, I was glad that TNN ran the series again! I had been looking for episodes for years and what a joy to be able to tape the whole series (I may have missed a few episodes). Jenny Hanahan

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: I was at this film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 1997. After the screening, when the writer/director and some cast members offered to answer questions, no one could even be bothered to ask any. Rarely has a film been so poorly directed (why on earth were random frames snipped out of some scenes?), wretchedly acted (David Arquette, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, does not run the emotional gamut from A to B. He parks at A and brings a lunch) and utterly pointless. Characters behave completely out of character for no reason except to force the plot to move in certain directions. At long last, the film comes to a completely random and pointless end that's supposed to "really make you think." Unfortunately, what it makes you think is, "Well, there's 90 minutes of my life I'm never getting back."

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: There are some things I can never understand. Such as this movie. What if I were to create a really really cheap and crappy looking Dino and crocodile polygon model in Maya and then proceed to cut and paste that into an amateur video clip having people scream and getting eaten by the same thing? How can anyone even believe that an utterly fake CGI dinocroc that looks completely out of place, would influence the events in this movie? I know that its B-grade, low budget and all but the producers could do better than making a piece of crap that no one will ever seen see or sit through. It just does'nt make sense. Are people really so stupid that they would sit through this? Apparently so. For laughs? No, this thing isn't even worth laughing at.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Robert Culp (they call his character "doctor"...I think he's a vet or something) and family move to an affluent, low-tax, zero-law-enforcement suburb. Lantern-jawed Culp and his dog are nearly killed when some local idiot neighbor kids get drunk and "go cruising" through his front yard at 60mph. He presses charges, which arouses the kids' ire, and suddenly him and his family are the victims of a violent and disturbing prank campaign.

Marilyn Manson, er, Marlyn Mason rather, plays his fretful, boiled-celery wife, who urges him not to use violence against his sneering nemeses, and who really just wants to move somewhere with decent public services. But The System is getting Culp nowhere, and he's not about to leave his house because of some punk kids and their crazy rock and roll music. And we all know what movie people do when The System fails...(but this is based on a true story, which makes it even better).

It should be noted that while the villainous hooligans do have convenient '70s funk-o-matic "teenage" theme music that warns us when they're up to no good, this film actually ends up treating the age brackets even-handedly (really!). It doesn't make a big generational thing out of it. Kudos for that.

Anyway, if you like dogs (or at least believe in protecting their civil rights, like me), and you like justice, and you like fire, and you like justice for dogs by way of fire, and you think people who skitter nervously out of troubled communities are "too damn soft," then this flick's ethos is up your alley. No, it's not really "good," at least not in any widely recognized sense of the word. There's nothing subtle or understated or clever about it, it's just sort of a feature-length PSA for vigilantism. It does, however, capture the feeling of some memorable scenes in other, beloved works. Remember in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns when Batman leads the Mutants on horseback to reclaim Gotham City? Remember that scene in A Christmas Story where the kid pounds the bully's face in? Remember how cool that was? Or do you just really hate being looked at funny by your neighbors? Yeah, mon.

Unfortunately, this was a 1973 made-for-TV movie that I just happened to catch at 4am on my local WB affiliate, and it's probably not destined for DVD release. But after being inspired by this film, do you think I'm gonna just sit here and take it!?!

Is the sentiment of this review positive or negative?

pos/neg ans:
positive