Director: Neil Marshall
Script: Neil Marshall
Cast: Sean Pertwee, Liam Cunningham, Kevin McKidd, Emma Cleasby, Leslie Simpson, Darren Morfitt
Runtime: 105 mins
Year: 2002
Certificate: 15
When Second Sight films announced they were releasing a new restoration of Neil Marshall’s werewolf classic, Dog Soldiers, I was keen to jump in and check it out, along with the wide array of extras on offer. Why, my keenness, you ask? Well, not only do I rate Marshall’s first feature very highly (it’s one of my favourite movies), but I also have been following said director’s career closely ever since he did me the ‘solid’ of being one of the first guests who agreed to attend my first horror film festival, namely BloodBath, in Bath, way back in 2002.
Dog Soldiers is primarily a soldier film, truth be told, revolving, as it does, around a small contingent of British squaddies out on exercises in the remote wildernesses of Scotland (actually Luxemborg standing in for Scotland, in this case). After quickly establishing the whys, wheres (or should that be ‘weres’) and whos, our band of brothers are quickly besieged by a group of lycanthropes who have made the secluded forests in the highlands of the UK their hunting ground/home.
Briefly rescued by enthusiastic zoologist, Megan (Cleasby), the beat-up/mauled survivors hold-up in a secluded farmhouse located in a nearby glen and have to try and stay alive until sun-up; no easy task when your adversaries are extremely hard-to-kill supernatural creatures.
Marshall was clearly influenced by the likes of Assault on Precinct 13 and Zulu when he wrote Dog Soldiers, which is no bad thing as both those films are classics of the siege sub-genre too. The first act sets up the film and characters, with a little back-history to the area and the rivalry one of the men has with the special forces team operating in the area, and then the following acts are all siege-based.
Marshall maintains a nice pace to the film, and relies on old-school VFX to create his werewolves, which is very welcome, especially when Bob Keen’s effects are so effective. The dialogue is very naturalistic and believable (Marshall comes from a military family, hence drew on family members’ experiences to increase authenticity), and the characters are likable, making us care when anything bad happens to them. It’s also very funny in places with some great one-lines, such as: “Let’s stay and drink tea” and “I hope I give you the shits!” There’s also one of the best ‘speeches’ in film history where Pertwee’s character relates the tale of a fellow soldier’s skin being literally protected by the Devil – it beats anything that Tarrantino has ever written, for sure.
In fact, I’d say that apart from a few continuity blunders and a couple of silly scenes, such as when the soldiers are whistling as they’re walking towards a known area of increasing danger, Dog Soldiers is a movie that’s hard to find fault with. The cast are uniformly excellent, the action is fun and well-staged, the balance between horror and humour is about right, and it’s all rounded off nicely by a creepily, intense music score. Excellent work by all involved and worth seeing at least of couple of times.
Dog Soldiers is currently out on Blu-ray under the Second Sight banner, as both a normal Blu-ray and also a limited edition 4K UHD version. Both visuals and sound quality are excellent, as one has come to expect from Second Sight, plus there’s a lot of special features accompanying the film, including:
An audio commentary track with director/writer Neil Marshall – Neil turns out to be a great commentator, revealing, as he does, various little known facts about the filming. There’s quite a bit of cross-over with the other Marshall featurettes in the extras, but the commentary is definitely worth a listen.
Audio commentary with producers David Allen and Brian O’ Toole – This gives quite a different perspective on production with them revealing how they cut quite a bit of Marshall’s original script out as there was too much in the way of soldier story introductions, which slowed the pacing down too much.
Audio commentary with writer/ associate professor of film, Alison Peirse – Again, a bit of a different take on the film; this is more of an academic analysis, and your reaction to this will depend on how much you can stomach high-brow analysis of what is essentially an action/horror film. I did quite like the idea of ‘the final man’ as opposed to the ‘final girl’ , which is more usual for these kinds of films.
Werewolves, crawlers, cannibals and more – A new 40-minute interview with Neil Marshall. Again, Neil proves to be a great, understated raconteur, full of interesting anecdotes and is quick to admit when things have gone wrong in his films – he clearly has little time for Hellboy, for example. American TV’s gain is the British film industry’s loss was my closing thought to this interview…
A history of lycanthropy (33.5 mins) – A nice talking head discussion with author Gavin Baddeley about the history of werewolves, focusing mostly on their appearances on film. He reminds us that Dog Soldiers is of the second type of werewolf movie, i.e. one that features werewolves who enjoy turning into supernatural beings and enjoy killing humans. He also discusses the historical connection between lycanthropy and alcoholism.
Werewolves, folklore and cinema: a video essay by author Mikel J. Koven (23.5 mins) – The ever reliable Koven discusses a nice selection of werewolf – related films and the supernatural being’s historical mythology and folklore.
Werewolves Vs Soldiers: The making of Dog Soldiers (61 mins) – A nice making of documentary that gives voice to wide range of contributors to the film including Marshall, producers Chris Figg and Keith Bell, actors Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd and Emma Cleasby, special effects artist Bob Keen, and the production designer, Simon Bowles.
A cottage in the woods (13. 5 mins) – An interview with producer designer Simon Bowles as he takes us through his designs for the cottage, which was built on a soundstage in Luxemborg. This is more interesting than you’d imagine.
Combat: A short film by Neil Marshall (8 mins) – Five guys go to the pub accompanied by sounds of warfare instead of dialogue. The short film that got Marshall noticed on the international stage. Worth a look, once.
Deleted scenes and gag reel (with optional commentary from Neil Marshall) (9 mins) – Introduces some more squaddie interactions, building on their backstories. Plus, the cow eating scene. Quite interesting, but I can see why the scenes were cut. The gag section is only a couple of minutes long – mostly of the ‘props going wrong’ variety.
Trailers (4.5 mins) – Reminded me of the cool trailer campaign the film had at the time; which emphasised stereotypes and asked the audience to guess who would be first to crack and accuses any who chose the woman as being sexist!
Photo gallery (4.5 mins) – Some cool behind the scenes stuff, annotated to explain what we’re seeing.
