10. HOWLOWEEN: Dig up a flick with some canine inclusion, bones and all. Now who wants a belly rub?
I have watched two of the three Doberman movies — The Doberman Gang and The Daring Dobermans — and every human in these movies is horrible, and the dogs are all good boys. There was also a TV movie, Alex and the Doberman Gang, which was a pilot for a series that, if it existed, would have lasted just a few episodes, and I would be telling you how episodes were put together and released theatrically in Europe.
Briefly re-released as Lucky, this movie gets past all the bank-robbing bad-guy stuff, and now we have a heartwarming, circus-adjacent family-comedy crime caper that asks us to accept the God-given logic of a tap-dancing legend like Fred Astaire sharing screen space with sharp-toothed Doberman Pinschers.
It’s the kind of movie your parents would force you to watch at the drive-in when the babes, beasts and boobs were just a screen away.
Our story opens with Lucky Vincent (James Franciscus), a gambler sinking deep into a twelve-thousand-dollar hole courtesy of a local mobster named Solly Kramer (Jack Carter). Just as Solly’s knuckle-dragging goons are about to introduce Lucky to the concepts of gravity and pain, salvation arrives on four legs.
By the way, I can’t tell you how many movies I’ve seen lately where James Franciscus is a gambler down on his luck and dealing with all the problems that come with it. I should make a Letterboxd list. I mean, it would include this and The 500 Pound Jerk. Maybe I should stick to lists about poisoned milk and aquarium death.
Enter Daniel Hughes (Fred Astaire), a revivalist ex-con who has traded a life of crime for the noble art of managing five dogs. After escaping the immediate wrath of the mob (as an Italian-American, I want you to know that there’s no such thing as the mafia and if there were, they’d give us the kind of protection and assistance that no one else would), Lucky tags along with Daniel, goes undercover at a circus and convinces Daniel that the world desperately needs a canine circus act.
Solly Kramer isn’t done making life miserable and has another scheme to knock over an armored car hauling the circus’s hard-earned box-office cash; the universe calls upon the only logical defense force available: an ex-con’s trained hounds. Add in a dash of romance between Lucky and a gorgeous circus performer named Justine Pirot (Barbara Eden), and you have a cinematic stew that tastes like airport food. I know. I’m writing this in an airport.
Billy Barty is in this, Barbara Eden does a horse routine (at the circus, clean up your brain) and dogs are awesome.
