Dog Eat Dog! (1964)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

What we have here, if you can believe it, is a chimera of film noir, early Russ Meyer, and a Ten Little Indians adaptation.The plot is verging on parody in its simplicity. Two crooks and a floozy (Jayne Mansfield), somewhere in the eastern Med, steal a million dollars (yes a million dollars exactly!) from a navy vessel transporting used $1000(?!) bills to be destroyed. The robbery isn't shown, which is all to the good really, as I don't really think there was a Peckinpah type amongst the four guys apparently at the helm. In point of fact though it's never the robbery that's interesting is it? That's why I hate heist movies that concentrate on the plan and the safe-cracking, the interesting bit is always the squabbling over the loot.The crooks end up on a sailing boat on the way to a deserted island which houses a disused palatial brothel. They pick up a couple of greedy stragglers on the way (the eavesdropping hotelier Livio and his incest-fixated yet frigid sister). On the island a motor boat has been stashed somewhere for the getaway, but Corbett (the crook who has the gun) doesn't know where it is, nor where the petrol is hidden.Anyway the brothel has a woman and her manservant in residence, these two they broke the mould after making. The manservant is a cod-philosopher gypsy-talking henchman type, whilst the woman is an elderly ex-madame who has returned to the island "in order to die". She thinks she is the Empress of the island and is always talking about the Emperor, whoever that might be, she is mentally fragile to say the least.It becomes a Ten Little Indians style mêlée after the cash goes missing. People are dropping like flies, and we don't know why. Corbett sums up the mood perfectly: "Where da party at? No dough, enough stiffs for a graveyard, no way out, nobody knows who's next and nobody knows who's doin' it" It's a nice movie to look at because it's set on an Aegean island, with a pretty mansion, fluted columns, palm trees, flora, sunshine. There's a lot of luridness here too. Jayne Mansfield's nymphomaniac character Darlene can't seem to stop mentioning that she wants a fresh pair of panties, that she is on her last pair. There's jazz music all the way through, just so we know we're at a party.One user described this movie as unintentionally avant-garde, well I'd go along with that. This is the stuff that cults are made of. You wont believe the ending by and by.

This 1960's oddity is a rare blend of pulp noir dialogue at it's worst, crisp B&W cinematography, snappy jazz score, Jayne Mansfield's round, doughy sex cat routine, Cameron Mitchell sweating and slugging people and every heist gone wrong cliché in the book (plus a little Agatha Christie thrown in for a good measure.) My friends and I were howling at the verbal "jousting" throughout the film and it is just loaded with one strange character after another. If you are expecting a well made taut heist film, rent Kubrick's The Killing - but for a fun, cheesy sixties crime crap in a blender - then this one is a hoot. Released in England with the much more subdued title When Strangers Meet, they slapped the Dog Eat Dog title on it in America and Mansfield died tragically in the now legendarily gruesome car accident. In fact Maynsfield is four months pregnant with future actress Law & Order:SVU's Mariska Haggerty (sp?) while filming this crime romp. There are cat fights, pistol whipping, Yugoslovian bartenders endlessly cleaning glasses, washed up madams, bald pimps and Cameron Mitchell bleeds more than any male lead in history (and Tim Roth was in an ENSEMBLE when he did all his marvelous bleeding in Resorvoir Dogs). Jayne Mansfield says a lot of unintentionally bad dialogue but her exclamation of "Crackers!" takes the cake...or the crackers...whatever.

The first hour or so of this film seems to be one of those barely competent Euro-thrillers that smells of "deal" and little more.Evil killers laugh for 20 minutes at a time, a thug in a car tries to kill a pedestrian thug and the editing makes no sense, a voluptuous babe offers to sell out the entire male cast sequentially and all at once, we've all seen it a thousand times and on our own deathbeds we'll undoubtedly regret the time we wasted doing so.Then the picture goes off the rails, perhaps because of the three or maybe four directors. All pretense of continuity goes out the window, scars disappear and reappear on faces, characters die for silly reasons or no reason at all; basically staging and dialog disintegrate completely. We watch the film go around and around in ever-diminishing circles and finally disappear up its own backside.You think, "Oh, the poor actors," as they all get that haunted look, like "How did I ever get involved with this mess?" and "Who do I have to sleep with to get OFF of this picture?" and "Boy, will I murder my agent when I get back home!" and "Oh wow, I really need to go; I'll bet it's that schnitzel last night at the hotel." Jayne Mansfield does some of the best acting in the film, which'll give you some idea of what to expect. When Cameron Mitchell goes berserk and starts ripping up the furniture, he does it with a remarkably rehearsed air, along the lines of "We only have one sofa, so I have to get it right on the first take," and "Does Stuart Whitman have to put up with this stuff in his movies?" There is no psychological or sociological subtext to this film; it has no stylistic elegance or directorial signature hidden in a overlooked "B"; it is simply a desperate and cynical attempt to make money. The movie fails on every level. You don't even get to see Dubrovnik. Skip it.

After her box office successes at Fox with hits such as The Wayward Bus, The Girl Can't Help it and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, the event that was Jayne Mansfield carved a new, and ultimately more interesting, career for herself in several European independent films.Dog Eat Dog, released in 1964, was filmed in the former Yugoslavia and features Mansfield as Darlene, one third of a gang of crooks who have availed themselves of $1m in stolen cash. After escaping to a "deserted" island with several other money-mad misfits in tow, the body count starts to rack up and the hunt is on for a killer while everyone else tries to get away with the loot.Sure, this movie is obviously low budget but it's still a lot of fun. The locations are nice, the dialogue is suitably trashy, it's pretty well directed and plot-wise it's watchable right to the end. And where else can you see one time Fox Amazon Mansfield hareing round a desert island with mad hair and a black eye? Recently re-released on DVD with some tasty extras this movie is well worth a look and proof, if any was needed, that Mansfield's post Fox film period wasn't totally devoid of gems.