Dog Soldiers (film)

Dog Soldiers
British quad poster for Dog Soldiers
Directed by	Neil Marshall
Produced by	Brian Patrick O'Toole Christopher Figg Tom Reeve David E. Allen
Written by	Neil Marshall
Starring	Sean Pertwee Kevin McKidd Liam Cunningham
Music by	Mark Thomas
Cinematography	Sam McCurdy
Editing by	Neil Marshall
Distributed by	Pathé
Release date(s)	10 May 2002[citation needed]
Running time	105 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Box office	$5,491,093 (Worldwide)

Dog Soldiers is a 2002 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall, and starring Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee and Liam Cunningham. A British production, set in the highlands of Scotland, it was filmed almost entirely in Luxembourg. In the US, it premiered as a Sci Fi Pictures telefilm on the Sci Fi Channel.

Plot

The plot begins with a couple camping in the Scottish Highlands. The woman gives the man a silver letter opener as a present; shortly afterwards they are attacked in their tent. Meanwhile, Private Cooper is seen running through a forest in North Wales. He attacks his pursuers, but is overwhelmed and wrestled to the ground. It turns out Cooper was trying to join a special forces unit, but fails when he refuses to shoot a dog. He is returned to unit by Captain Richard Ryan.

Four weeks later a squad of six regular British Army soldiers, including Cooper, is dropped into the Scottish Highlands. Expecting to carry out a training mission against an SAS unit, they only find their savaged remains. The single survivor, Captain Ryan, makes cryptic references to what attacked them. It is noticed that he has been wounded. Unseen antagonists make their presence known as they attack the troops. While retreating, Bruce is impaled on a tree branch and Sergeant Wells is attacked. He is rescued by Cooper and carried to the roadside where the group encounter Megan, a zoologist who takes them to a lonely house. The soldiers that remain are Wells, Cooper, Spoon, Joe, and Terry. As darkness arrives, the house is surrounded by the attackers: to the soldiers' incredulity, these are revealed to be werewolves.

They go to get in the car, but it was destroyed by the werewolves. The soldiers maintain a desperate defense against the werewolves, believing that if they can make it to sunrise, the werewolves will revert to human form. Cooper and Megan then treat Wells' wounds. After Terry is abducted and ammunition runs short, they realise that they will not last, and decide to try to escape. Spoon creates a distraction while Joe steals a Land Rover from the garage. When he gets in the car, he sees Terry in the garage being eaten by a werewolf. The werewolf rips off Terry's head and throws it at the windshield. Joe drives up to the house door, then realizes that a werewolf was hiding in the back seat. Joe is killed after he attacks the werewolf. Ryan transforms into a werewolf due to his previous wounds, but not before revealing in an angry exchange with Cooper that the Government had sent him on a mission to capture a live werewolf in order that they could be investigated and weaponised. A fight ensues and Ryan escapes, running off into the forest. The soldiers try blowing up the barn where Megan tells them the werewolves must be hiding with petrol, gas canisters, matches, and the Land Rover. Once it's been destroyed, Megan reveals that not only were there no werewolves in the barn, but she also told them that to destroy their only means of transportation; she is a werewolf as well, and had been suppressing the transformation, but now gives in. She also reveals that she unlocked the front door to the house, allowing the werewolves inside. Before she fully transforms, Wells runs in to the room just in time and shoots her in the head. He and Cooper run upstairs and Spoon runs to the kitchen, blocking the door. The werewolf breaks in and Spoon runs out of ammo. He fights the werewolf, but is killed by another. Meanwhile, Wells and Cooper shoot through the floor upstairs to escape the werewolves, dropping into the kitchen. Wells cuts a gas line and blows up the house whilst Cooper hides below in the cellar. Before he can flee, Ryan, transformed into a werewolf, confronts him. Cooper kills him with the silver letter opener and shoots him in the head. He and Megan's dog, Sam, walk off into the woods. As the credits roll a newspaper appears showing the football result (England 5 Germany 1) , with a smaller headline showing a small picture of Cooper and the headline "Werewolves ate my platoon."

Cast

• Kevin McKidd as Private Cooper
• Sean Pertwee as Sergeant Harry G. Wells
• Emma Cleasby as Megan
• Liam Cunningham as Captain Ryan
• Darren Morfitt as Private "Spoon" Witherspoon
• Chris Robson as Private Joe Kirkley
• Leslie Simpson as Private Terry Milburn
• Thomas Lockyer as Corporal Bruce Campbell

Production and release

Dog Soldiers was produced by the Kismet Entertainment Group, the Noel Gay Motion Picture Company, the Victor Film Company, and the Carousel Picture Company with the support of the Luxembourg Film Fund. In addition to the credits in the infobox, the costume designer is Uli Simon, the casting directors are Jeremy Zimmerman and Andrea Clarke, the special makeup, animatronic and digital visual effects are by the company Image FX, and the physical-effects supervisor and stunt coordinator is Harry Wiessenhaan.

A British production, set in the highlands of Scotland, it was filmed almost entirely in Norway.^{[citation needed]} In the US, it premiered as a Sci Fi Pictures telefilm on the Sci Fi Channel.

The film contains homages to H.G. Wells as well as the films The Evil Dead, Zulu, Aliens, The Matrix and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.

Reception

On the film-critics aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, Dog Soldiers scored 76% based on 29 reviews.

Awards

In 2002, the film won the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film's Golden Raven, the festival's top award, as well as the audience prize, the Pegasus.

Home media

Dog Soldiers was released on DVD in the US in November 2002 by Fox Home Video.

Sequel

Producer David E. Allen said in January 2004 that a sequel, Dog Soldiers: Fresh Meat, would begin a 35-day shoot that April in either Luxembourg or Canada with a budget of $5.5 million. Andy Armstrong, a second-unit director on films including Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Nightbreed, would direct from an Eric Miller script, with Allen and Brian Patrick O’Toole returning as producers. No casting was announced. Allen said the plot would involve Cooper being "picked up by an American team who, we find out, were the real opponents for the war games for Sgt. Wells' squad." A year later, he elaborated that, "In the first film, it was a family who were the werewolves. In this one, it's an actual team of werewolves who are true military men. So even though they are now werewolves, they act like a trained military unit."

In January 2005, Michael J. Bassett was in talks to direct, but by July 2006, Rob Green, who previously directed the horror film The Bunker, was set to direct and said he and Miller had written a story in which "Some of the characters actually love being a werewolf because they are so powerful – the ultimate killing machine … [I]t’s a fun spin on the traditional angle that being a werewolf is a curse which damns the person the person no matter what. We also have a very savage she-wolf in the climax who faces against the leader of the pack of Dog Soldiers." Production was not set for autumn 2006. By December 21, 2008, however, information about the film had been removed from various web resources including the website of production company Kismet status.

A "Little Red Riding Hood"-inspired web series, Dog Soldiers: Legacy, was announced in September 2011 by producer and Kismet vice president, Allen, now going by D. Eric Allen. A teaser trailer for the series was filmed in northwest Arkansas over the last weekend of August 2011. Directed by Ryan Lightbourn, the trailer included members of Allen's family, including his grandmother Pat "Nan" Allen and his sister Emmy Allen, as Red. Allen also said the Dog Soldiers sequel was in early pre-production.

See also

• Battle of Rorke's Drift

External links

• Dog Soldiers at the Internet Movie Database
• Dog Soldiers at AllRovi