The Plague Dogs

This 1982 film was Michael Rosen’s follow-up to the popular but controversially visceral Watership Down, and in another world possibly could have established him as one of the world’s foremost animators, pushing animation about animals far, far away from cutesy American fairy stories. But no, The Plague Dogs was too bleak, much too bleak, and this was his last work as the director of an animation, with only a vague, name-for-credibility’s-sake connection with the Watership Down series.

And this is definitely not Disney. You might say forcing audiences to face death in Bambi or The Lion King reflects a certain darkness and maturity. Well, The Plague Dogs opens in a vivisection lab, where the poor dog Rowf is forced to swim in a tank until he drowns, getting revived to do it again another day, and again and again for the test results. In the next scene we see the dogs kept in their pens – and the dead ones picked up by a shovel to be dumped. I wrote of the colourful adventure story with chickens and ducks that gained some critical acclaim from Korea, Leafie: A Hen Into the Wild, that the bleak beginning on the battery farm showed that the film wasn’t going to pull punches, but after that it’s a colourful and enjoyable – if mature – adventure story and family drama. Well, The Plague Dogs starts bleaker than that – two dogs manage to escape their pen and get outside only through the incinerator, moments before the dead dog dropped in there with them is destroyed – and despite moments of hope and brightness, gets bleaker. Rowf is one of the dogs, the other being Snitter from the pen next door, who has had his brain experimented on and suffers seizures, but is convinced that there are good, benevolent ‘masters’ who will help them and give them a good life. They do not get a good life. Out on the Yorkshire Fells with no idea how to live, they first try to find a new master – not understanding how things work – and then try to go wild, which leads to their meeting a canny fox who calls himself The Tod, who teaches them better ways to kill sheep to survive...so that he can take his piece. His thick Lancashire accent is another reason the film hasn’t travelled well – although he sounds perfectly intelligible to me, speaking in a way not a million miles from my grandpa, a nice contrast with John Hurt’s neat enunciation. (Patrick Stewart also cameos!)

Arguably the film is less bloody and violent than Watership Down, but it’s so, so much bleaker. The Plague Dogs is mostly characterized by its unending, affecting bleakness. It’s probably more punishing and miserable than even Grave of the Fireflies, and while there is beauty in that – and great beauty in this film – it is not exactly the beauty one is desperate to revisit. Rewatching it today was my first repeat viewing in a good decade (the VHS, with various cuts). The film is so good at setting up and then dashing false hopes – in a few seconds, we see Snitter finally getting some affection and seconds later a gun has gone off and a man is clutching his face with blood running down from between his fingers.

The Plague Dogs has a unique aesthetic – or at least, shared with Watership Down alone – and some beautiful imagery and direction, with lots of close cutting. There are some impressive and haunting images, even if so simple as the rubber gloves for reaching inside the rat cages being left inside-out. Snitter’s hallucinations are probably more believable and unsettling than Fiver’s, though the transformed stones are a very misleading image to publicize the film with (as they did).

But I don’t mind the film being obscure. I don’t mind it not having the legacy it might have. I have enjoyed it, and I have to say that for all it’s punishing and even upsetting, it’s also quite beautiful, and haunting, and certainly unique. 

Watership Down

Was Watership Down for kids or adults? On one hand, it has some terrifying and bloody scenes of hallucinogenic death, some grimly realistic scenes of violence and voice acting from respected thesps. On the other, it’s about the adventures of a group of talking rabbits trying to establish a new warren after theirs is destroyed. The decision in the end rests with parents, but Watership Down will always be contentious – it is bloody, it has both supernatural scares and realistic ones (from the Black Rabbit of Inlé to Bigwig trapped in a snare) and much of the plot is given over to the need to reproduce.

But one thing is for sure – it was a staple of my childhood, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Richard Adams’ novel became one of my favourites of all time, and my brother and I would delight in reciting Kehaar’s lines (‘Vings good! Feathers clean!’, ‘Perfect landing!’), even if my five-year-old self would get a few things mixed up (‘You stoopid bunnies! You got no mates! Vere are mates? Vere are chips?’, ‘I soar! I glide! I settle…’). A few things made me feel nervous, but that only added layers to the intrigue, and I’m convinced that my childhood would be a worse place without this film.

The scrawny young rabbit Fiver has visions. He sees the future, though nobody but his brother Hazel believes him. Hazel is a natural leader, though, and when the chief rabbit refuses to abandon the warren, he takes a small faction to find somewhere new to live. After an abortive attempt to live with rabbits who live peaceful lives – as long as they don’t mind some of their number occasionally getting snared by the farmer – they find a great spot at the top of a hill. However, they have to find some does – and with help from a gull they nursed back to help, they find that there are some at a nearby farm. Hazel gets shot and seriously injured in the attempt to free them, though, and even then they need more to survive – so turn their eyes to another warren nearby, Efrafa, ruled with an iron fist by the formidable General Woundwort. The toughest of the rabbits, Bigwig, infiltrates the warren, but this only earns the wrath of Woundwort. So the rabbits prepare to defend themselves - with a trick or two, and a dog loose in the woods.

The film is incredibly quotable, and brings from the book an incredible mythology, one of the best in fiction. The rabbits have their own belief system, their own gods and superstitions, and their vocabulary is peppered with idiosyncratic words. They even suffix names with honorifics. Adams pitched these just right, so that they are believable as an alternate vocabulary without being cheesy, and it creates a brilliant exotic world within the familiar.

While it shows its age, being animated in 1978 by a team assembled for the project by director Michael Rosen rather than an established studio, it has an aesthetic that is almost inimitable. The animals are largely drawn with as much realism as possible, and it is great to see how the characteristic movements of rabbits and birds are captured in simple animation. While it will be nice to see Watership Down animated anew (not cheaply, like the TV series), I doubt it will be as visually iconic, even if Animal Logic really do go ahead with the project, instead of mucking about with projects centred on Walking with Dinosaurs and Lego…Another crack at the story will be great, but this is a visual statement that will endure forever.

The acting is also excellent, a snapshot of 1970s Britain, with the twilight of very posh Englishmen having great respect as serious actors and yet with diversity and strong female roles also represented. I might not like prophecies as plot devices, but having a mystic makes for great creepy lines. The music, of course, is iconic, with ‘Bright Eyes’ an enduring classic. Indeed, Watership Down has been influential on music ever since, and pops up in all sorts of places – from Paul McCartney to …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, musicians have enjoyed making references to Adams’ work; Slipknot referred to the film on ‘Killers are Quiet’ and Skrillex named his label after the Owsla. And it’s not just musicians: Stephen King has characters reading the book, and references have even popped up in materials in the extended Gundam universe.

An enduring classic, I will not hear anything against it. It takes its concept seriously and transcends ideas of cute bunnies, demanding to be taken seriously even if it means traumatising a few kids. Beautiful and strange, it is very likely the best piece of British animation ever made and essential viewing for any animation fan. Shame Plague Dogs didn’t live up to it - at least commercially.