White Dog

Shortly after the Criterion Collection released Samuel Fuller's nearly-forgotten and long-suppressed 1982 film White Dog, the National Society of Film Critics (in its year-end awards for 2008) issued a special “Film Heritage Award” to Criterion for finally making this available on DVD. White Dog is pure Fuller, a provocative film from the auteur who directed in-your-face cinema masterpieces such as Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss, and the now-classic World War II epic The Big Red One. Fuller teamed up with then-unknown screenwriter Curtis Hanson (later the A-list director of L.A. Confidential) to co-write and direct this electrifying statement on American racism, based on a short story by Romain Gary, starring ‘80s TV star Kristy McNichol. The story is simple but bluntly effective: struggling L.A. actress Julie Sawyer (McNichol) adopts a white German Shepherd she hit with her car, nursing the animal back to health only to discover that it's a “White Dog”—so named for a Deep South racist tradition of training dogs to viciously (and exclusively) attack and kill African Americans—after which she recruits an old animal-talent agent (Burl Ives) and a black animal trainer (Paul Winfield) to re-program the deadly canine. White Dog avoids even the slightest hint of sentiment, serving up a shocking conclusion that leaves no one unscathed by the social blight of racism. Criterion's superb DVD release boasts a newly-restored high-def transfer, and features extras including new video interviews with Hanson, Fuller's widow Christa Lang-Fuller, and producer Jon Davison—all of whom recount the film's genesis, production, and sorry fate at the hands of Paramount studio executives, who literally buried the film after deciding it was too much for mainstream filmgoers. Further background information is provided in a text interview with the film's innovative dog trainer, and an accompanying booklet that features appreciative essays by critics J. Hoberman and Armond White, along with a reprinted 1982 article in which Samuel Fuller “interviews” the film's canine costar. Highly recommended. (J. Shannon)