Rabid Dogs (1995)

Interesting facts

Rabid Dogs is an Italian road movie thriller-noir film directed by Mario Bava, starring Riccardo Cucciolla, Don Backy, Lea Lander, Maurice Poli, George Eastman and Erika Dario. Taking place largely in real time, the film follows a trio of payroll robbers who kidnap a young woman and force a man with a sick child to be their getaway driver, all while trying to avoid being caught by the police. The film was shot in 1974, but due to issues in post-production was not widely released to the public until 1998.

Production

By the early 1970s, Mario Bava was facing difficulties in his career. He received creative freedom to make the type of film he wanted with Lisa and the Devil (1974), which was shelved when it failed to find a distributor at the Cannes Film Market. Another of his films, A Bay of Blood (1971), was a box office disappointment in Italy.

American actor Al Lettieri was hired to play Riccardo, but after arriving on the first morning of shooting intoxicated, he was fired and the role was recast three days later with Riccardo Cucciolla. Cucciolla could not speak English; according to co-star Maurice Poli, he had to read his lines in English from the script that was placed strategically around the car.

All that remained to be filmed were some cutaway shots involving helicopters and police cars, and a pre-credit sequence. Loyola went bankrupt during this period, and had the production shelved. The Bavas attempted to regain possession of the film, but were unable to retrieve the rights to complete it.

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