se71

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August 30, 2002

Dog Soldiers

Exciting werewolf gorefest

Sean Pertwee is the leader of a group of soldiers on exercise in a remote part of Scotland. There is a full moon, and they discover another group of soldiers who have been ripped to pieces in the woods. One of the soldiers is barely alive, and they patch him up and take him with them. Then they are attacked, Pertwee's stomach is ripped open, and they make a dash for the road where there is a landrover driven by a young woman who rescues them.

They are taken back to a farmhouse, but are attacked throughout the night by the wolf creatures and gradually picked off. The rescued soldier makes a remarkable recovery, and reveals that he was trying to capture one of the creatures, and also that they really are werewolves. Then he turns into a werewolf and attacks everyone, but is repelled out of a window. Pertwee realises that this will be his fate too, and sacrifices himself at the end to blow up the farmhouse and all the werewolves...or has he. Cue standard surprise ending.

This is surprisingly good; it's not often that Britain produces such an exciting horror film. The old Hammer films have their charm, but the pace is generally quite slow, this is fast. It's interesting when the lead character, Pertwee, gets savaged quite near the beginning, and as he pushes his guts back into his stomach and tapes them up you wonder where the film will go from there. Then you remember that it's a werewolf film, and his eventual transformation is obvious. The action is relentless as one after another the men meet their gory deaths, and it's reminiscent of Predator in a way. There is also a lot of tongue-in-cheek humour, so all in all this is the best british horror film for years.

AE0

Posted by se71 at August 30, 2002 03:11 PM

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