Dog Eat Dog – DVD
Dark Sky Films
Dog Eat Dog is a movie that was released in 1966 staring Jayne Mansfield. This could very well have been the last movie she made before her untimely death. It is now available on DVD I believe for the first time.
Dog Eat Dog is a story about a trio of crooks who stole one million dollars that was en route back to the United States to be retired and replaced with new bills. After the heist, the trio shack up in a hotel and plan their getaway. Some unscrupulous folks overhear their plans from outside the door and plot to do a little heist of their own and steal the money. This leads all parties involved to be holed up in an old defunct brothel with the madame that ran it and her assistant, who now too want to get their hands on the money. This cavalcade of shady characters attempt to out-screw each other out of money and plot a way to get it for themselves. One by one people start dying and it just gets all the more chaotic as time progresses and people start getting greedier and more desperate. If you can get past the first 15 minutes where Jayne Mansfield’s character uses the phrase, “Crackers” so much it becomes annoying, the story is a very entertaining one and despite the dialog being at times a little cheesy or campy, the story is pretty damn solid and it is a really fun watch.
The video is black and white and widescreen with a pretty sharp picture, especially considering the film is now 40 years old. They either had a nice print to work from or there may have been some restoration work done to it. The sound is the original mono mix and sounds very clear. The movie was originally shot overseas so the English is actually dubbed. There is a couple of bonus features that are extremely short; you get the original theatrical trailer (when the movie was going to be titled, When Strangers Meet), and you get two different newsreel footage clips of Jayne Mansfield and her family talking about the movie and then the report of her death, and you get a photo gallery. The movie is just shy of 90 minutes long and the bonus features are maybe five minutes in length total.
It is nice that an old, entertaining, and most likely overlooked movie was given the DVD treatment making it a pretty fun movie to pick up, or at the very least a very worthwhile rental. If a sort of campy mystery is to your liking, then this disc is worth checking out.
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If I recall correctly, she died less than 30 minutes from where I grew up.
thanks for reviewing this…I did not know it had been re-released. I will be buying very, very soon…