Following DVD Toons’ review of the recent (and hard to find) Region 1 edition of the sadly truncated cut of director Martin Rosen’s animated adaptation of Richard Adams’ The Plague Dogs, the site was contacted by Big Sky Video in Australia, who are all set to release – for the first time since a UK VHS release in the early 1990s – the full uncut version of this important film to DVD, using Rosen’s personal 35mm print of the film for the transfer. Big Sky (who collaborated with Rosen before, on the commentary for their release of his earlier Watership Down disc), were not able to include a commentary this time around due to budget constraints on suitably transferring the uncut feature (in the original full-frame ratio of the negative), but will also include the US cut version (from the initial 103 minutes down to 81) and the theatrical trailer. This will be the first time that The Plague Dogs will have ever been officially released in Australia, either theatrically, on video or television, and the uncut edition is being promoted as a Region 4 (PAL format) exclusive, so get those multi-region players up and running! For more on the film, and a first-look at the DVD cover art, follow this link:
Based on writer Richard Adams’ follow up to his own Watership Down, The Plague Dogs follows the story of two dogs that escape from a research laboratory and try to survive in the wild north of England’s Lake District. The film is a dark satire on animal testing with a subtle political commentary that questions the British Government and the media. Their adventures lead them to a cunning fox called The Tod, whose guidance isn’t always as helpful as it seems.
The film cost $5 million, and took two years to make, by much of the same team that director Martin Rosen used on his acclaimed version of Watership Down. The San Francisco unit employed over 130 people (including such future star names as animator Brad Bird and voice artist Patrick Stewart) and achieved a high level of realism without the aid of today’s computer generated wonders.
Following its 1982 low key success internationally, The Plague Dogs was heavily edited for release in the US in 1984, but Rosen still regards the film as his best work to date. The film and the book have a few significant differences, with the film’s focus firmly placed on the dogs themselves, Rowf and Snitter. The human action is minimal and shown as being one-tracked and unrelenting in their intolerance of the stray animals and the potential horrors they could unwittingly unleash.
Indeed, there is little room or time for the viewer to become attached to the animals themselves. As a custodian scoops up the carcass of one of the laboratory prisoners early in the film, the sound of the shovel scraping against the concrete floor resonates through every animal lover’s body and mind and is the final touch to a chilling scene which describes the devastating truth of what laboratory animals face.
With only the heavily truncated cut released recently on DVD in the US (the film and that disc are reviewed in-depth here), Big Sky Video’s new issue of the full, uncut edition of The Plague Dogs is available for pre-order now as a Region 4 (PAL format compatible) exclusive, which will ship on Friday July 22. Big Sky’s previous Watership Down disc, with commentary from Martin Rosen that also touches on The Plague Dogs, is also available here.
A full review of both these titles will appear at DVDToons soon, and we will, of course, keep up to date on any changes with this exciting release. In the meantime, we have an exclusive first look at the full, theatrical poster-inspired DVD cover artwork:
