This past weekend there was a British horror film on the Sci-fi Channel titled “Dog Soldiers” The premise sounds rather odd, a British commando unit on exercises in Scotland is set upon by a pack of werewolves. It could have been ridiculous but, IMHO, it wasn’t. It was well acted and, to be blunt, it scared the crap out of me. The “parental discretion” advisories before several parts were no joke. Slasher movies(like those with Jason and Freddie) are just stupid, even if they do have shock value. But a real horror film scares you every time you see it, even when you know what’s coming. Such films for me include *Silence of the Lambs, * and Alien(I and II) I was just wondering what anyone else might have thought of it.
Reminded me of ALIENS, insomuch that the good guys in this movie are well equipped, well armed and know what they are doing vs. strong/almost unstoppable creatures, rather then the traditional “Good guys (except for hero) are cluless and unarmed” horror/slasher movie.
I didn’t see it, but I would have watched it had I known it was on.
Question- Was this the same movie that was only recently released in theaters? Why was it released to TV so quickly?
Also, was Dog Soldiers a limited release or what?- I haven’t seen it playing at any local theaters and I’m really looking forward to finally seeing it
Thanks,
-j
So it seems it wasn’t released in the US at all, according to the stats on IMDB. I wonder why?
Saw it, loved it, for exactly the reason HPL pointed out. It’s so nice to see a movie where the hero(s) is a match for the villian, wit-and-armament-wise. The very ending was a bit deus-ex-machina, but it wasn’t so bad that it ruined the whole thing for me.
And I loved the line “What self-respecting werewolf would have anything silver in their house anyway?” ::snort::
-BK
Saw it, loved it, for exactly the reason HPL pointed out. It’s so nice to see a movie where the hero(s) is a match for the villian, wit-and-armament-wise. The very ending was a bit deus-ex-machina, but it wasn’t so bad that it ruined the whole thing for me.
And I loved the line “What self-respecting werewolf would have anything silver in their house anyway?” ::snort::
-BK
Saw it, loved it, for exactly the reason HPL pointed out. It’s so nice to see a movie where the hero(s) is a match for the villian, wit-and-armament-wise. The very ending was a bit deus-ex-machina, but it wasn’t so bad that it ruined the whole thing for me.
And I loved the line “What self-respecting werewolf would have anything silver in their house anyway?” ::snort::
-BK
The resemblance to ALIENS didn’t stop with the “well-armed soldiers being a match for the bad guys” routine. There was also the back-story of a previous special forces group tasked to capture a werewolf alive and bring it back for bioweapons research (and failing miserably, of course). There was the “one of our own is infected” schtick and “if it comes to it I’ll do us both”. The main diff was that the group of soldiers weren’t expecting to do combat, but just happened to be well armed due to being on a training exercise. All resemblances aside, I still liked it. I, ah, “found” it online and watched it on my PC.
I’m still not sure who the movie title was referring to, the werewolves or the soldiers. Now what would be cool is a movie about a group of mercs, all werewolves by night, being inserted to various foreign countries to carry out “black” ops, so to speak.
I went to IMDB to try and find out how to buy it but when I went through their Amazon.com links it didn’t seem to be available yet. If it comes on TV again I could tape it but that wouldn’t be as good quality.
I enjoyed the movie quite a bit; essentially a horror movie filmed as a combat movie. I was a little confused about exactly what happened at the end; it looked as if a werewolf was dispatched with an ordinary pistol shot to the head, after spending the movie establishing that they couldn’t be killed with ordinary guns. But possibly I’m mistaken.
I expected this movie to be a poor ripoff of slasher films, but it wasn’t. There was good character development and held my interest. I have a few questions because some of the movie got away from me. Why does the woman help them if she’s a werewolf too? Does she or doesn’t she know she’s a werewolf? Earlier in the movie, the leader of the commando team was gutted by a werewolf. Towards the end he was running around, not seeming to notice his insides were struggling to get out. What’s with this? Could werewolves control when they turn or are they helpless when the full moon appears? Thanks for your insights.
On the question about being nearly gutted, he healed because he had been “infected” or something by the werewolf. The same thing was happening to the head of the special ops unit, the nasty guy. The former figured out what was happening to himself, so he helped the last man get away and stayed behind in the house as “bait”, knowing he wouldn’t get out.
The woman was injured and infected AFTER she started to help and bonded with the soldiers.
I really liked most of the actors, but the scene with the border collie and what appeared to be a lower intestine still confuses me. Could any movie be that, well, dumb?
That was, I think, part of the injured guys’ bandages that the dog was pulling on. Looked like cloth to me.