White Dog

White Dog: Sam Fuller's steamy pile

The long anticipated home video release of Sam Fuller’s final Hollywood film, White Dog, happened this past December (part of the Criterion Collection) and quite frankly, as a huge fan of the director and a rabid cinephile, I felt like the cur came into my living room and shat on my rug.

As is often the case with movies that are hijacked for various censorial reasons, White Dog built a near mythic reputation as the Sam Fuller film that Paramount buried due to its volatility and the NAACP didn’t want you to see.

The truth is much blander. While the NAACP did protest its release, it had little to do with the film being squashed. Paramount was looking to get in on the “man versus nature” bandwagon started by Jaws seven years earlier and was simply too late to reap benefits from the fading genre. Missing that boat and unable to toss it into the trash heap of the then defunct Blaxploitation market, White Dog sat almost idle for 26 years, occasionally popping up at international film festivals and traded or sold by underground bootleg vendors.

I had seen snippets here and there, more enticed by the lurid possibilities of the subject matter than believing the film was ever essential Fuller. And, as usual with all things cinematic, I was astoundingly correct.

It is a bad film. Not even campy Naked Kiss bad, just plain awful.

Fuller’s hard-nose storytelling (fate, vengeance, survival, gritty realism, human weakness, false bravado) collapses under the weight of the melodrama. Even his usual “in your face” visual style seems awkward and forced in this setting (How many close-ups of a snarling mutt do you need?). We are instead treated to numerous instances of preachy dialogue, amateurish scriptwriting, bludgeoning symbolism and intensely poor acting.

Kristy McNichol stars as a (here’s the stretch) small-time actress who hit’s a runaway German shepherd in the Hollywood Hills. She brings it to a vet and is warned that the dog will be put down if she cannot find the rightful owner or assume responsibility for the animal herself.

It is not mentioned whether it’s possible to put Kristy McNichol down if no one is willing to claim her.

She adopts the dog.

The dog saves her from a home intruder/rapist and the two bond.

Soon, however, the dog strays. He tears into a black man operating a street sweeping vehicle (Uh, okay) then attacks Kristy’s actress friend (who is also African-American) at a shoot. It is becoming rather apparent that the dog dislikes people of color.

Maybe he was raised in a Republican household.

Turns out, it’s a bit of both. He’s a “white dog” (the titular canine) who has been trained by racists to attack black folk.

Believing she can rehabilitate the dog, she takes it to a Hollywood animal trainer played by Burl Ives.

What?!

Burl Ives.

Come again?!

Burl Ives.

You’re kidding me?

No. Burl Ives.

In his quite imitable parlance, Burl Ives informs her the dog has gone rogue and nothing, no how, can save it. “Had a buddy with a reformed attack dog don’t you know who…”

Jesus Christ.

Enter Paul Winfield, the only person in the film whom the dog does not out act, who claims he’ll set the hound right.

Kristy believes in him and his unorthodox ways.

Enough, I say.

Kristy McNichol is such a bad actress she cannot even play a bad actress.

Any unfortunate who has followed her career and life knows she’s barely able to play Kristy McNichol.

And the film is anchored on her.

This is embarrassing Sam Fuller material. The man has taken some major dumps on screen before, so this is not a shocker. His oeuvre is all over the map. He made his epic masterpiece The Big Red One just two years prior. What’s really troubling is the Fuller apologists who won’t admit to the elephant in the room. In this case, a big white dog.

And I do mean dog.