WHITE DOG

Jessica Hopper — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:18:58 +0000

White Dog is out now on DVD. I would recommend you throw it to the top spot on yr Netflix cue. Unfortunately, this nice little synopsis on the Criterion website fails to mention all the truly great stuff about the movie: the Burl Ives under the crotch shot, his ham-fisted jeremiad about robots in movies, when Paul Winfield lifts his shirt to “expose his black skin” and the White Dog goes crazy in it’s cage, cotton balls visible in its jowls to lift it’s little mouth into a sneer–and then Winfield does the tummy-show again, and then feeds it the dog a White Castle slider and still…the scene does not. It just cuts between growling dog and Winfield, though the ante just peters out. It doesn’t even mention the pentultimate dramatic moment of the entire film: when the habitually braless Christy McNichol whips a Whitman sampler offered by the old racist grandpa at a garage door and screams obscentities at him and his little grand daughters, or that six different dogs–some quite obviously different breeds, even–play the same dog. Or where the dogs at the pound appear to be put down via a technique that looks a lot like putting them in a front-loading dryer. Or that the movie is like 33% McNichol yelling, 33% Paul Winfield fighting a dog and the rest either endless close ups of the dog growling or Burl Ives freestyle weirdness (the ad-lib, minute-long “delicious sour cream” scene). Or the opening scene where the street cleaner plows through the lingerie store because a racist dog is EATING HIS FACE OFF. It’s not a heavy movie about racism, it’s Samuel Fuller’s career ending hallucination of camp and the inexplicable.

Whitman Samplers – I SAW THAT

WHITE DOG