White Dog (1982)

Directed by Samuel Fuller
Written by Samuel Fuller and Romain Gary

Rated PG for violence.

"White Dog" was initially shunned when it was released in the 80's. The story was too racially charged for the times, and the general viewing public seemed to mistake social commentary on racism for racism itself. I was initially drawn to this film both because of the controversy surrounding it's original release, and because I'd seen Sam Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" (1953), a black and white noir about stolen microfilm and communist spies and was curious if his later work was as good. I found "White Dog" to be even better than "Pickup...", though Fuller's strong sense of visual composition is present in both.

"White Dog" opens with Julie, a young actress (played by Kristy McNichol) hitting a white German Shepherd with her car on a winding road in the California hills. Julie feels terrible and takes the big dog in, even paying his expensive vet bills to keep him from being put to sleep at the pound as an abandoned animal. Julie's interaction with the giant dog is adorable. We see her nurse him back to health with playful affection. The happy dog and owner's peace is shattered when Julie is attacked in her home one night by a rapist. Before she is harmed, the dog mauls the rapist and pins him down until the police arrive. In one of the film's darkly funny but also sad moments, the cop who arrests the rapist says: "That's the same damn rapist I caught last year!"

Julie appreciates the dog more than ever now that he's saved her from the rapist. Even Julie's actor boyfriend feels better having the dog to look after Julie in her secluded house. When the dog follows a rabbit off Julie's property and makes his way to the city, we begin to see another side of the otherwise adorable and heroic pup. The dog attacks an African-American street-sweeper operator, causing him to crash the street sweeper into a storefront, killing him. When the dog returns to Julie covered in blood, she assumes he merely got into a scuffle with another dog and lovingly washes him off, blissfully unaware of his dark secret.

When (for some unknown reason I can't fathom) Julie takes the dog with her to an acting gig, the dog attacks Julie's friend, a black actress, hospitalizing her. This scene also includes a great film in-joke about the "flicker" effect caused by using a camera and projector with different frame-rates looking French and artistic. But really, I suppose the most important part of this scene is Julie's realization that the dog she's taken in and grown fond of is a trained attack dog.

Desperate to find a cure for her dog's attack training, Julie takes the dog to an animal training facility that trains a variety of exotic animals to act for films and commercials. Here she finds a man named Keys (Paul Winfield) who has experience reconditioning attack dogs and is the best in his field. When the dog tries to attack one of the black men working at the compound, Keys tells Julie: "You've got yourself a white dog." He explains that the term is not merely a reference to the dog's color, but that a "white dog" is a dog that racists have trained to attack and kill blacks.

Perhaps the most frightening part of "White Dog" is the fact that it's based on a true story. Romain Gary's short story is based on the experience of his wife Jean Seberg, who found a large dog that seemed friendly and playful. When she took it home, it attacked her black gardener. She confined it to the backyard, but it got out and attacked black men on two other occasions. Only after the third time did she realize that someone had trained the dog to attack blacks on sight. But this is not an isolated incident. As Keys explains in the film, "white dogs" have been trained to attack black people since slave times, when they were used to find and catch runaway slaves. After that, they were used to track down escaped black criminals. Now, they mostly only exist as personal guard-dogs for people racist enough to train dogs to kill blacks. For me the most horrifying aspect of the film is that there are people out there who would inflict their prejudices on an animal to turn it into a lethal weapon. [***See note at bottom of post for more info on the historical inspiration for the film.]

Director Sam Fuller with one of the dog actors from "White Dog".

Keys takes on the challenge of rehabilitating Julie's dog. He tells her he has made two attempts to retrain white dogs in the past, but both were unsuccessful, and both dogs had to be put down. He warns her that if he's unsuccessful with the reconditioning, he will have to shoot the dog himself. Julie reluctantly agrees, desperate to keep her dog from causing any more harm to blacks.

Julie asks how it is possible to train a dog to hate black skin. Keys explains that dogs experience the world visually. A racist can find a desperate black person and pay them to ritualistically beat puppies, the younger the better. These dogs will be gradually conditioned to hate and fear black skin to the point that they will viciously attack it with no provocation. Unlearning this racist conditioning can be dangerous too, as the dogs can snap under the pressure of reconditioning and become dangerous to people of any skin color.

Keys gradually breaks the dog's spirit with an exhaustive training regimen designed to teach the dog that it does him no good to attack black people. In leather pads, Keys spars with the dog, gradually earning its trust. When the dog escapes and kills another African-American, Keys and Julie must seriously reappraise their mission. Is it worth retraining a racist dog, or is the best option to kill it? Aren't the people who stand by and allow racism to happen partially responsible for it? Is it possible to cure racism, or foolhardy to even try?

I give "White Dog" an enthusiastic 10/10. It's a fantastic social commentary on racism, and features some of the most impressive animal performances ever committed to film. The cinematography is simple but elegant, and the acting is solid all around. "White Dog" also features a beautifully tense score by the amazing Ennio Morricone (who is most famous for scoring John Carpenter's "The Thing", Oliver Stone's "U-Turn" and Sergio Leone's "Fistful of Dollars" trilogy). Overall, "White Dog" is a somber and pessimistic film that poses questions about racism that are as relevant today as they were in 1982.













I also recommend:

























[***Historical Note: The Criterion edition of "White Dog" comes with several essays on the film in a booklet. One of these essays describes another bit of inspiration for the film that I found fascinating: In WWII, German Axis forces would train German Shepherds to sniff out Allied troops based on smell (differences in diet, etc.). They would paint the dogs' backs white and send them out at night to "point" to Allied soldiers' encampments. The Allies would not fire on the dogs, thinking them to be harmless. The Germans would then bomb the areas the dogs pointed to, wiping out the enemy without risking any of their own soldiers.]