DOG SOLDIERS

UK, 2001, 105 minutes, Colour.
Sean Pertwee, Kevin Mc Kidd, Emma Cleasby, Liam Cunningham.
Directed by Neil Marshall.

Dog Soldiers was a critical and popular success for its writer-director Neal Marshall. Marshall then went on to direct the award-winning horror film, The Descent, and filmed Doomsday. It means he is a specialist in this kind of horror genre – playing on different conventions as the werewolves in Dog Soldiers, the Living Dead in The Descent.

The film shows a group of soldiers on an exercise in Scotland, coming across a mutilated cow, finding a house in the forest – which leads to sinister conclusions. The people in the house are werewolves and pursue the soldiers, picking them off one by one.

The film has a lot of horror effects – but done rather more in British style than the more obvious splatter style of the American horror films. Marshall’s next film was The Descent which focused on a group of women cave explorers being terrorized.

1. The impact of the film as horror, military horror? The legends of werewolves? The Scots setting?

2. The Welsh and highlands locations, the moods, the terrain, the weather, the full moon?

3. The atmosphere, the musical score, editing, especially for horror effects?

4. The title, the men as soldiers, dogs and wolves?

5. Cooper, the test, Ryan and his failure?

6. The scenes with the wolves, the campers, the devastation?

7. The mission, the sergeant and his men, the task, the bonding, the telling of stories, the locker-room atmosphere? The individuals, the strategy of the test, the cow, the ravine, the dead men?

8. Ryan, Cooper, the charge?

9. Fears, action, the men being chased, killed, arriving at the manor?

10. The girl, her touch, the house, offering help, advice? Her relating to the men, bandaging the wounds? The lies that she told, the trap? The background of zoology? Death?

11. Ryan, the transformation, the end and his dilemma?

12. The sergeant, being bitten, his intestines, going to bed, recovering too rapidly? His leadership, knowing the truth, preparing to fight, destroyed?

13. The men, their bravado, the challenge of the manoeuvre, the challenge of the werewolves, death? The truck and the fire?

14. The wolves, the truth, both animal and human, working in packs, their attack, destroying the men?

15. The final confrontation in the house, the household including the girl and their entrapment of the soldiers, the chase throughout the house, the cupboards?

16. Cooper as the only survivor - but his future? A film of archetypes of war, of werewolves, of superstition, of death and destruction?