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Dog Soldiers
Dog Soldiers UK DVD cover
Directed by	Neil Marshall
Produced by	Christopher Figg Tom Reeve David E. Allen
Written by	Neil Marshall
Starring	Sean Pertwee Kevin McKidd Liam Cunningham
Music by	Thomas Mark
Cinematography	Sam McCurdy
Editing by	Neil Marshall
Distributed by	Pathe Film
Release date(s)	United Kingdom March 22 2002 Australia March 20 2003
Running time	101 minutes
Country	United Kingdom Luxembourg
Language	English

Dog Soldiers is a 2002 British horror film, written and directed by Neil Marshall and starring Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee and Liam Cunningham. It was a British production, set in the highlands of Scotland, and filmed almost entirely in Luxembourg.

The film contains homages to H.G. Wells, the films The Evil Dead, Zulu, Aliens, The Matrix and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.^[1]

Plot

The story begins with a couple camping in the Scottish Highlands. The woman gives the man a silver letter opener as a present, soon after they are attacked in their tent. Meanwhile, Private Cooper is seen running through a forest in North Wales. He attacks his pursuers, but is overwhelmed and wrestled to the ground. It turns out Cooper was trying to join the special forces, but fails when he refuses to shoot a dog. He is returned to unit by Captain Richard Ryan.

Four weeks later, a squad of six British Army soldiers, including Cooper, is dropped into the Scottish Highlands. Expecting to carry out a routine training mission, they find the savaged remains of a special forces squad who were part of the same training exercise. The single survivor, Captain Ryan, makes cryptic references to what attacked them. It is noticed that he has been wounded. Unseen antagonists make their presence known as they attack the troops. Whilst retreating, Bruce is impaled on a tree branch and Sergeant Wells is attacked. He is rescued by Cooper and carried to the roadside where the group encounter Megan, a zoologist who takes them to a lonely house. The soldiers that remain are Wells, Cooper, Spoon, Joe, and Terry. As darkness arrives, the house is surrounded by the attackers: to the soldiers' incredulity, these are revealed to be werewolves.

After giving Wells treatment, they go to get in the car, but it was destroyed by the werewolves. The soldiers maintain a desperate defense against the werewolves, believing that if they can make it to sunrise, the werewolves will revert to human form. After Terry is abducted and ammunition runs short, they realize that they will not last, and decide to try and escape. Spoon creates a distraction while Joe steals a Land Rover from the garage. When he gets in the car, he sees Terry in the garage being eaten by a werewolf. The werewolf rips off Terry's head and throws it at the windshield. Joe drives up to the house door, then realizes that a werewolf was hiding in the back seat. Joe is killed. Shortly after confessing that his unit was in fact assigned to capture one of the werewolves, and that Cooper's squad was intended to be the "bait," Ryan transforms into a werewolf due to his previous wounds and runs off into the forest. The soldiers try blowing up the barn where Megan tells them the werewolves must be hiding with petrol, gas canisters, matches, and the Land Rover. Once it's been destroyed, Megan reveals that not only were there no werewolves in the barn, she only told them that to destroy their only means of transportation; she is a werewolf as well, and had been suppressing the transformation, but now gives in. As she begins to transform, Wells shoots her in the eye, wounding her. Cooper and Wells run upstairs and Spoon runs to the kitchen, blocking the door. The werewolf breaks in and Spoon's rifle jams. He fights the werewolf, but is killed by another. Meanwhile, Wells and Cooper shoot through the floor upstairs to escape the werewolves, dropping into the kitchen. Wells cuts a gas line and blows up the house whilst Cooper hides below in the cellar. Before he can flee, Ryan, transformed into a werewolf, confronts him. Cooper stabs him with the silver letter opener and shoots him in the head, killing him. He and Megan's dog, Sam, walk off into the woods and as the credits roll a newspaper appears showing the football result England:5 Germany:1, with a smaller headline showing a small picture of Cooper and the headline "Werewolves ate my platoon".

Cast

North American DVD cover

Awards

Golden Raven and Public's Award to The Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film, in 2002.

Sequel

A sequel Dog Soldiers: Fresh Meat was planned and it was said that the story would pick up from the end of the first film.^[2] Neil Marshall was not involved with the production and neither was cinematographer Sam McCurdy, production designer Simon Bowles or any of the original cast, aside from Liam Cunningham. Rob Green was pencilled in for directing duties.

Although it was announced that filming would commence in April 2006,^[3] by 12 August 2008 information about the film had been removed from various web resources and there was no news of its production status.^[4]

References

1. ^ Director, cast and crew commentary. Dog Soldiers (DVD). Pathe Film.
2. ^ Dog Soldiers: Fresh Meat at UHM
3. ^ Producers talk DOG SOLDIERS: FRESH MEAT at Fangoria
4. ^ Why has DOG SOLDIERS 2 disappeared off the face of the earth?, QuietEarth.us

External links

• Official site at Scifi.com
• Dog Soldiers at the Internet Movie Database
• Dog Soldiers at Allmovie
• Dog Soldiers at Rotten Tomatoes