Samuel Fuller’s throat-grabbing exposé on American racism was misunderstood and withheld from release when it was made in the early eighties.Today, the notorious film is lauded for its daring metaphor and gripping pulp filmmaking. Kristy McNichol stars as a young actress who adopts a lost German shepherd, only to discover through a series of horrifying incidents that the dog has been trained to attack black people, and Paul Winfield plays the animal trainer who tries to cure him. A snarling, uncompromising vision, White Dog is a tragic portrait of the evil done by that most corruptible of all animals; the human being.
Direction
Fuller's final Hollywood film—fierce, scrappy, deliberately ugly.
Practical Effects
Real dogs, real tension, no CGI safety net.
Writing
Romain Gary source novel adapted with sledgehammer subtlety.
Director
Samuel Fuller
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Paramount shelved it for years fearing NAACP backlash; the organization actually supported its anti-racist message.
Fuller, a WWII combat veteran and pulp journalist, saw this as his most personal statement on American violence.
US
