Random 'Man's Best Friend' Is A Charmingly Stupid '90s Horror Movi (14 items)

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  (#1) 'Man's Best Friend' Is Essentially 'Cujo' Meets 'Child’s Play' 

  Maybe this shouldn't come as much of a surprise, given the pedigree of Man's Best Friend. Writer-director John Lafia is one of three writers credited on the screenplay for the original Child's Play, and he directed the first sequel just a few years before Man's Best Friend hit theaters. While the trailer implies more child-in-peril scenes than Man's Best Friend actually delivers, the genetically enhanced dog does go after the local paperboy and terrifies Lori's rollerblading neighbor kid, who apparently comes over and lets himself into her house whenever he wants.

  The dog in Cujo is a Saint Bernard, while Max 3000 is played by five Tibetan Mastiffs. In spite of the difference in breed, the two animals even look kind of similar. And, of course, there are also similarities between Man's Best Friend and Frankenstein, with Max having been created in a lab and ultimately turned on by his creator. However, Dr. Jarret's motives and feelings toward Max are certainly harder to plumb than Victor Frankenstein's ever were.
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  (#2) The Opening Credits Play Over An Intense Montage Of Old-Timey Dog Pictures 

  Even before the film's cold open, we're treated to a montage of classical paintings featuring dogs - and sometimes other animals - that veer from normal to sinister as Joel Goldsmith's melodramatic score swells. Goldsmith later went on to compose the music for several of the Stargate TV series.

  By the time the credits end, however, the paintings have returned to "normal," and we close on an image of a little girl holding a puppy. This foreshadows not just the film's arc, but also its final scene.
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  (#3) The VHS Cover Made Max Look Like A Cyborg Dog

  Man's Best Friend made a decent showing at the box office, earning $12 million from a $6 million budget, but most people who saw it probably picked it up at their local Blockbuster, where the cover art promised something that the movie didn't deliver. Featuring Lance Henriksen front-and-center (and no sign of Ally Sheedy except on the back), the VHS cover also showed Max in a shiny chrome hue, heavily implying that Max is a cyborg. This implication is only strengthened by the quote from Jeff Craig of Sixty Second Preview on the back, which calls Man's Best Friend "a canine Terminator."

  While this marketing technique was likely meant to cash in on the popularity of the Terminator franchise (Terminator 2 had come out just a couple of years before), it couldn't help but disappoint those who went into Man's Best Friend expecting a cybernetic pooch before the credits rolled.
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  (#4) The Appeal Of This Film Lies In Watching Max Take Out Bad People

  Slasher films often get a bad rap for being "body count" movies where the villain takes out various unlikeable characters - and some horror movies definitely fit that mold. Man's Best Friend is one of them. While Max is certainly the monster, and Dr. Jarret is both co-protagonist and bad guy, almost all of Max's victims (with one or two exceptions) are characters we've been primed not to like.

  From a purse-snatching mugger to smug and unhelpful cops to an offensive junkyard owner, most people who encounter Max are jerks, either to him directly or to Lori. Even the postal worker, who probably gets worse than he deserves, seems to take some delight in macing Max. Meanwhile, Lori's boyfriend comes off as kind of whiny, even though he really doesn't do anything all that bad until after Max has already chewed through his brake lines.
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  (#5) Max Is An Impossible Genetic Crossbreed Of Various Animals 

  If you watched many horror movies about genetic engineering in the '90s, you'll know that back then, most horror filmmakers seemed to be pretty sure that you could just dump the DNA of all kinds of animals together and you'd get whatever aspect of that animal you wanted. Want something with the ability to change colors like a chameleon? Just throw some chameleon DNA in there.

  The film lists several of the animals that went into Max's DNA (including, yes, a chameleon) and rattles off some of the powers that this unlikely combo gives him, including the ability to climb with "jaguar-like agility," change colors to blend in with his background, and more. It is implied that he has the DNA of tigers and bears (oh my), as well as other exotic animals.

  Weirdly, Max pretty much only ever uses these strange abilities in isolated set pieces that have nothing to do with the main story, such as when he climbs a tree to chase a cat or when he changes colors to startle some animal control officers.
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  (#6) It Plays Into The Anti-Animal Testing Movement That Gained Momentum In The '90s 

  In the '90s, the debate over the pros and cons of animal testing was raging in America and around the world, and Man's Best Friend was far from the only horror movie to wade into the fray. In 1996, just three years after the film's release, various animal protection groups formed the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics, while in 1998, Britain banned the use of animal testing in the manufacture of cosmetic products and ingredients.

  In the film, Ally Sheedy plays a journalist who intends to exploit this groundswell of interest in animal rights by doing an exposé on the inhumane practices of a genetics laboratory. Man's Best Friend shows cruel vivisections performed on animals and puts most of the pro-animal testing arguments in the mouth of Lance Henriksen's character, a morally dubious scientist with delusions of grandeur.
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  (#7) The Filmmakers Went To Great Lengths For The Dog Stunts

  There are a lot of stunts involving animals in this movie, and the Humane Society has an extensive breakdown of just how they were all safely accomplished, using everything from puppets to highly trained dogs to optical illusions.

  When Max is swallowing the cat, for example, the cat is actually being pulled backward into a puppet head by its handler. The scene of Max climbing the tree is accomplished with camera trickery and Max walking along a horizontal log - the difference in texture between the log and the actual tree is apparent in the film. When Max jumps over police cars near the film's climax, it's a combo of a platform jump and some fake cars.
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  (#8) There’s A Scene Of Forcible Dog-On-Dog Relations 

  One of the things that makes Man's Best Friend such an oddity is its tone, which often feels disjointed, even for a movie from 1993. The juxtaposition of horror and humor worked for some people, such as Jake Dee who, writing for Arrow in the Head, praised the film's "waggish sense of dark humor."

  Nowhere is this odd and often inappropriate humor more apparent than in a played-for-laughs scene where Max pursues and ultimately mates with the neighbor's unwilling Collie - a scene that pays off in the end with a brood of puppies, one of which looks just like Max. In case you weren't sure whether it was supposed to be funny, the scene is set to Paul Anka's 1960 hit "Puppy Love."
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  (#9) Ally Sheedy’s Character Is A Textbook Example Of A Passive Protagonist

  Although Ally Sheedy was nominated for a Saturn Award for her performance in Man's Best Friend (she lost to Andie MacDowell in Groundhog Day), her character doesn't actually do much. In the film's opening moments, Lori shows a lot of initiative as she breaks into the lab and bullies her camera operator into filming some footage for the exposé that they're planning to film. Once Dr. Jarret catches them in the lab, however, and they flee with Max in tow, Sheedy's character takes a back seat to the motives of those around her.

  She takes Max home, seemingly without any concern that an animal rescued from a lab where unknown tests were being performed might be dangerous for more prosaic reasons than the threat of the animal being a genetically engineered predator. For example, he might have contagious diseases about which she knows nothing. Nevertheless, aside from forming an unbreakable bond with Max, Lori is pushed around by the actions of other characters until the film's final denouement.

  Even the relationship between Lori and Max, which makes up the heart of the film's emotional arc, feels perfunctory. Lori seems much more heartbroken by Max's demise than she is by Max attacking her live-in boyfriend.
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  (#10) Max Pees Acid For Unknown Reasons

  On top of all the other abilities he has as a result of his genetic manipulation, Max also appears to have acidic urine. We see this the first time when he lifts his leg on a fire hydrant and the metal subsequently smokes and sizzles. Later, he uses this technique against Lori's boyfriend Perry, who we are led to dislike even though his worst decisions occur after Max tries to knock him off by chewing through his brake lines.

  Which animal Max is supposed to have gotten this particular trait from is never discussed.
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  (#11) Lance Henriksen's Character Is A Bit Over The Top 

  Most of us who watched Man's Best Friend when it first came out probably did so mainly because of Lance Henriksen's name in the credits. He's one of the film's high points, playing a bizarrely over-the-top doctor who feels like several characters crammed into one. It seems as if the character took a lot of different turns in different drafts of the script that all got jammed together in the final version.

  He cajoles and berates the police to get them to take action to find his missing dog, then threatens to sue them when they do take action. Furthermore, he tells the police everything about Max and his experiments, even though what he's been doing is clearly against the law. In some moments, his character seems almost comical, with his fly-away blond hair and denim jacket, as he peers under his glasses to look at suspect photos. Other times, he shouts at police officers, dashes the contents of their desks to the floor, and takes the law into his own hands.
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  (#12) There's Plenty Of Aggression - Some Of It Against Animals

  Pet lovers beware: There are more than a few scenes of animals in peril throughout Man's Best Friend. Though he is ostensibly the "monster" of the piece, Max is mistreated by virtually everyone he meets: He gets bonked on the head by a hurled newspaper, sprayed in the eyes with mace, and hit with a shovel. Max isn't the only one, either. A foul-mouthed family parrot bites the dust (off screen) and we're treated to plenty of images of animals who have been cruelly experimented upon, including a monkey with an exposed brain.

  In one of the film's most memorable sequences, Max actually swallows a cat whole after chasing it up a tree. While the Humane Society has certified that no animals were actually harmed in the making of the movie, and even breaks down how all the various effects and stunts were safely accomplished, it can be a little much for those with a low tolerance for animal cruelty.
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  (#13) There's An Annoying Rollerblading Kid

  Man's Best Friend came out in 1993, so you'd better believe there's an irritating kid in it who teaches the parrot to say "fartface," is on rollerblades pretty much every time we see him, and wears a flannel shirt everywhere he goes. The kid is also painted as having little to no moral compass. Not only does he seem to come and go as he pleases in Lori's house, but he also borrows Max and eggs the dog on to chase a neighborhood cat.

  The kids seem startled when Max climbs a tree and swallows the cat whole, but they also don't bother to tell anybody about it.
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  (#14) A Clip From 'Man's Best Friend' Shows Up In The Movie 'Friday'

  In the cult film Friday, starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker, a character played by John Witherspoon is seen watching the part of Man's Best Friend where Max chases the postal worker on TV. "It's yo a**, Mr. Postman," Witherspoon says as Max goes over the fence after the mail carrier.

  Both films were released by New Line Cinema, which may have been how Friday was able to use a clip from Man's Best Friend just a couple of years after it came out.

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