Burkettonhe
This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.
Micah Lloyd
Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Lela
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
morrison-dylan-fan
Just before my local Hollywood Video closed down (RIP) I went in and and picked up a number of Videos on sale,which appeared to largely be films that have not come out on disc. Despite being taken by clips of his movies in the doc Not Quite Hollywood I for some reason have never got round to seeing a flick from Brian Trenchard- Smith.Sorting out Videos to view for the IMDb Horror boards October Challenge,I found an unwatched Hollywood tape of a Trenchard- Smith's family offering,which led to me letting the atomic dog roam free.The plot:Finding leaks,a nuclear plant is ordered to shut down right away.Refusing to go with his owner,a dog stays as everyone leaves the plant. Over the next year,the dog licks up the nuclear wastes and mutates. Crossing paths with a female dog who has wandered on the plant,the now-mutant dog breeds with it. Returning home,the Yates family find that their loyal dog has returned with puppies. As they meet the puppies,their dog dies.Keeping the puppies,the Yates start to see the dogs act very strangely.View on the film:Working with the "family TV Movie" dog tags,director Brian Trenchard-Smith and cinematographer David Lewis surprisingly show some real white fangs with Ozploitation-style first person tracking shots from the mutant dogs point of view,and the good old boy being having a liking to rip any persons throat out,who tries to keep him apart from the family. Whilst having to shoulder some aw-shucks TV family moments (with Isabella Hofmann and Katie Stuart being welcomed inclusions)the screenplay by Miguel Tejada-Flores grabs the collar for some rather unsettling bites at Horror,which includes killing almost every dog in the film, (sweet dreams kids!) and giving the lead mutant dog a sharp mind which allows for tense traps to be made for the stupid humans,as Cujo Jr wags his tail.
Leofwine_draca
A dog is irradiated and goes on a rampage of violence in this ultra-silly children's horror flick, directed by a man who should know better: Brian Trenchard-Smith. Trenchard-Smith is a guy responsible churning out some fantastic little B-movies old (TURKEY SHOOT) and new (AZTEC REX), but he must have really been slumming it to put his name to this particular outing.This Z-grade flick plays out as a child-friendly version of the Stephen King thriller CUJO, as a lovable dog goes on a PG-rated orgy of violence. The script and performances are overall poor, as are the limited special effects. The decision to give the dog a kind of PREDATOR vision is particularly silly although it did have me laughing. There are lots of other dogs in the film too, and many of them are well trained, so if you're a dog lover (like myself) you might enjoy it a little. It's still an awful film, though.
Martin Wagner
[Mild spoilers included] This won't win any Animal Planet awards, nor is it exactly good sci-fi. It's basically a 1950's B-movie updated to the 90's. A puppy dog is left behind when a nuclear power plant suffers a "low-level radiation leak," and, instead of dying horribly, is transformed into a Superdog with human intelligence and the ability to leap 9-ft. fences at a single bound. He impregnates the dog of a family who's just moved into town (who apparently don't care their house is down the block from an evacuated nuclear plant) then terrorizes them trying to reclaim his puppies, one of whom is tame and the other vicious. When that doesn't work he tries to "adopt" the family's little girl, who doesn't fear him. Fairly pedestrian all the way around, with not much tension (though the atomic dog is well trained). And I'm particularly bewildered by the poster who said this is a good children's movie; there are 4 dogs in this movie and three of them end up dead.
Hawks_Girl
I think this is a crazy but good movie about a family that runs out of luck when they discover that the pups from their dog Trixie are actually mutants. Well, half-mutants. Why oh why....? Because the dog who is responsible for this 'accident' is a mutant himself! He lives in the Power Plant nearby and is actually a devoted father. When he returns to get his 'children' back, the troubles begin...! And when I say 'troubles' you may expect the worst. To avoid a spoiler alert, I must stop here. I already read somewhere that this movie is 'educating' in some ways. That could be true, because living near or in a Power Plant does effect your body and your DNA. Poor doggy, he could have had a normal life, but... Finally, to make you realize you should see this movie, I should warn you that it has a (SO MAYBE THIS IS A SPOILER!!!) dramatic ending. Figure out yourselves what that's supposed to mean, all right?
