Rabid Dogs

A film that takes place inside a car in Italy. A robbery is carried out. Things go wrong in the getaway and one of the crew dies. Three men are left. They have the money and no car. They take a woman hostage in the street. Then they stop a car. There is a man in it. A sick child beside him; he is driving to a hospital. Five people get into the same car. From there the film takes place almost entirely in that car. Front seat, back seat, heat and sweat. Outside is normal. There are petrol stations by the road, people working in fields, and nobody notices anything. The three men are different. One is planned and calm; one is fond of violence; one is stupid and quick to anger. The woman becomes the target. The narrative holds this section long and softens nothing. The driver does not speak. He is calm, cooperative, and follows instructions to the letter. What the narrative is interested in is not robbery but endurance: all its tension comes from a closed space and from nobody being able to get out. A piece of information arrives at the end and the meaning of the whole journey changes. That ending is the narrative's only turn and it has been prepared from the start. It was shot in 1974. The producer went bankrupt as soon as filming ended, the negative was seized by court order, and the film disappeared. The material was found twenty years later, cut and released. Different edits are therefore in circulation. Mario Bava never saw it finished. The budget is very small and the location is nearly a single one. Riccardo Cucciolla, Don Backy, Lea Lander and Maurice Poli are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1970s Italian thrillers and films set in confined spaces. Who it is not for: anyone who does not want to be unsettled; the narrative corners the viewer deliberately and the violence goes on a long time.