Pug (2006)

It's about time someone gave the pug-nosed dog a cinematic re-evaluation. We had lovably stubborn Otis from that wonderful family film Milo and Otis, that bundle of attitude Frank the Pug from Men In Black, and who could forget Duke Leto Atreides' wrinkly-faced companion from Dune? Well, probably no one even knows about that one, and I had to actually do a google search for "movies featuring pugs" to find it. Also, there were like 3 sites devoted to this topic.

Well, now we have Bentley, who rips to shreds all our onscreen pug stereotypes as if they were so much chew toy stuffing.

We meet Bentley as he's being purchased and carted home to the unsuspecting Hilton household. David and Judy Hilton have decided their 2 children are old enough to start learning responsibility in the form of pet ownership. And what better pet to take under their roof than that symbol of cuteness and...um, ugliness: the pug. Little do they realize, Bentley is the 13th descendant in a long line of pugs bred by Earl Willoughby, a occultist and part time breeder who, as the legend goes, used black magic and satanic rituals to produce pug-nosed pups with murderous instincts. The breeder's "handbook" sternly foretells the coming of the 13th birth in the killer pug lineage, who will basically be the Damien of dogs or something, and will command the power of the Great Evil Cur, yadda yadda yadda... Anyway, this is all explained in flashback in the hilariously overacted opening scene, which features two (count 'em) instances of the phrase "by the mange of beelzebub!" and gives Warlock-era Julian Sands a run for his money.

The bulk of this Z-grade laughfest, which looks like it was shot with a handheld EasyShare camera, consists of the boilerplate "series of gruesome deaths that no one can explain". Awful lines like "There isn't a canine on the planet that's capable of this kind of carnage!" spoken by the nerdy zoologist, are tossed out repeatedly. The acting is high-school-theater level at best, and the plot is riddled with so many holes it makes Ernest Goes To Camp look like Chinatown. The attempts at romantic chemistry between the heroic (but dumb as a brick) dogcatcher and neighborhood ditz fall with resounding thuds.

But let's face it, all these things don't matter, because the movie succeeds in delivering the real goods: pugs killing people. The pug attacks are spectacular. Gory as hell (the dog-wrangler must have basically dipped the real life pug in red corn syrup) and in fact, surprisingly realistic. There's a great scene in which Bentley attacks the pretty unsuspecting babysitter, and a scene involving a guy's brains and a dogfood bowl which I won't ruin by explaining how amazing it is. Every possible way a tiny dog could attack a human is explored in this movie, and they're all extremely funny (and bloody). The low-angle point-of-view camera stuff is a nice touch too, accompanied by really fast panting sounds.

And can anyone really hate a movie that features the line, "Eat this you scrunchy-nosed fuck!", followed by a shotgun blast to that cute wittle facey-wace in the movie's head-scratchingly apocalyptic final scene. Pug-lovers and PETA members, unbunch those panties, because of course this isn't the end for Bentley. He is brought back one final time in the form of some giant 8-legged pug-spider-giraffe-thing, only to be commanded back to hell by the dying breeder Willoughby with his last breaths. It's all god-awful and gut bustingly funny, as it damn well better be. And as the big styrofoam creature is pulled back to the great green-screen netherworld, I could see the strings that pull it.

There's a little twist ending of course, where we're back to happy suburbia, and 2 little girls find a stray pug puppy under a tree in the park. The puppy has a pentagram-shaped birthmark on his neck, but screw it, those girls are taking him home anyway, because he's KEE-UTE. I was really hoping for a Turner and Hooch style ending, where the girls find the little rascal devouring the family cat or something and they go "This is not your room," but maybe that was asking too much.