Devil Dog

Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell ~ I'm seeing this telemovie for the first time since 1978, but I have vivid memories of the first time this movie of the week was on television.

I remember not the night it first aired so much as the next day at school. In English we were doing a creative writing exercise, and had been doing it for a few weeks, and it was finally due that morning. One kid, who shall remain nameless, but he knows who he is, and anyone reading this who was in the class remembers who he is, handed in his story and its name was "Evil Dog: Hound from Hades." I wonder what he had been doing the last few weeks, but I sure do know what he had been doing the night before! Man, would I love to read his 'story' now!

The original movie, plagiarism lawsuits aside, starred such television luminaries as Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimieux, Ken Kercheval, Lou Frizzell, and those two Witch Mountain kids Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann. The flick was written by mediocre television writers Elinor and Steven Karpf and directed by Curtis Harrington, who actually used to be an interesting director. But it doesn't show here, the writing obviously overshadows the directing, and the performances, which are worse than the usual movie of the week.

The story is a fairly simple one. The devil mates with a dog (don't laugh, yet) and a Satanic cult sends the litter of subsequent puppies out into the suburbs to raise havoc. Our feature family receives a German shepherd named Lucky who likes to play mind games with the family, killing a maid and basically effs with everybody.

There's so much telekinetic stuff going on here I would have thought the Witch Mountain kids would have caught on right away, but no go, they quickly becomes Lucky's slaves, and total brats. Father Richard Crenna seems to be the only one hip to the dog's evil and faces off with the devil dog that has taken over his family. Great z-movie fun, this would have been prime real estate for "Mystery Science Theater 3000."