We ended with our usual Tween-Fest Texas movie. This year’s entry was 1983’s Play Dead, which was shot in Corpus Christie. This has been hanging around my Blu Ray shelves for a while now, courtesy of one of Vinegar Syndrome’s sales. Yvonne DeCarlo (!) plays a woman who’s a witch or Satanist of something, and uses her pet Rottweiler to murder (mostly) her family members. Not for an inheritance or anything, but because her sister stole the man she loved back in the day. Maybe. I mean, I wouldn’t call the character a reliable narrator or anything.
I guess this puts the film as a latter day entry in that subgenre of films wherein former glamour queens play homicidal old biddies. Frankly, DeCarlo doesn’t bring enough juice to the part; the secret of these is for the former stars to chew the scenery. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not bad or anything, it’s just I could have used a bit more eye-rolling and spittling.
Several of us, watching the dog’s murderous deprivations, called to mind the Tom Skerritt episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker. The film was actually kind of dull, although not terrible or anything. However, whenever we were in danger of running out of patience with it, the dog would kill somebody in a ridiculous fashion and save the day. So in the end I think people generally considered it a decent, if minor, watch. And the ending is fun in a moronic way too, which always helps.
So I wouldn’t urge anyone to buy this (sorry, Vinegar Syndrome!), but if you like killer animal flicks you might want to give it a look. It might make a decent double bill with Devil Dog Hound of Hell, and that Kolchak episode if you really want to make an evening of it.
