Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978) – Review

There’s something undeniably charming about the made-for-TV horror movies of the 1970s. Maybe it’s the sincerity. Maybe it’s the slightly off studio lighting. Or maybe it’s the sheer audacity of a film that asks you to fear a floppy-eared family pet with glowing eyes. Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell is one of those gloriously ridiculous late-night specials.

The protagonist of this horror classic is Mike Barry (Richard Crenna), a classic suburban dad: he works hard, wears sweaters, and doesn’t ask too many questions until it’s way too late. His wife, Betty (Yvette Mimieux), is a sweet, doting housewife and art therapist who makes casseroles and doesn’t notice when her children become soulless monsters. The kids, Bonnie (Kim Richards) and Charlie (Ike Eisenmann), are bright-eyed and all-American—until they start acting like tiny members of a Satanic youth league.

 

“Why did we even have children?”

After the family dog dies in a tragic “accident” (which suspiciously happens off-screen), the Barrys do what any grieving family would do: they adopt a new puppy from a smiling, apple-peddling Satanist (R.G. Armstrong) at a roadside fruit stand. That’s not hyperbole—the man is literally part of a dark cult that bred the German Shepherd in a backyard Hell ritual, hoping to spread Satan’s influence one puppy at a time. They name the dog Lucky, because irony.

 

I wonder if Satan also offered Eve a puppy?

From the start, Lucky isn’t so much man’s best friend as he is Hell’s middle manager. The family maid (Tina Menard), who is the first to get the heebie-jeebies, ends up flambéed in a suspicious fire. Mike nearly becomes lawnmower mulch while Lucky looks on with the dead eyes of a hellbeast. The dog’s escalating antics include mind control, arson, telepathy, more murder and turning the kids into conniving little sociopaths. Charlie even frames a fellow student just to win a school election, which is probably the most realistic part of this entire movie.

 

“I’ll Make School Great Again!”

Mike, a little slow on the satanic uptake, is just your average suburban dad with a healthy mistrust of anything the dog does, but slow to act on it. He notices the kids getting creepy, the wife entering “Satanic Stepford” mode, and the dog somehow glowing in the moonlight, but it takes forever for him to figure out what’s going on, despite mounting evidence like his formerly sweet kids turning into little Damien understudies and the family dog staring into his soul like it knows when he’ll die—finally connects the dots after stumbling upon a homemade Satanic altar in the attic. Candles, an unfinished pentagram and a nice demonic painting, the whole Hobby Lobby occult starter pack.

 

“Is this the kind of thing they are teaching at school these days?”

This is usually the part in the movie where the main character calls a priest, or at least googles “demonic dog behaviour.” Not Mike. Mike’s plan? Load up the ol’ handgun and go full Dirty Harry on the family pet. Spoiler: it doesn’t work. The dog shrugs off the bullets like it has a Star Trek force field made of brimstone. Undeterred, Mike consults with a woman (Gertrude Flynn) at a local occult book store, who informs him that his dog may be a Barghest, a monstrous, goblin dog with huge teeth and claws that appears only at night.

 

“It says here, contact the Scooby gang, if needed.”

This leads him to his logical next step: fly to Ecuador. Because nothing says “problem-solving” like international travel and vague mysticism. There, he finds a reclusive mystic who apparently just waits around for middle-aged dads with demon dog problems. This wise old man lays out the ancient lore: you can’t kill the devil dog—duh—but you can trap it in Hell for a thousand years. All you have to do is hold a holy symbol (any brand, really) up to the beast’s eye long enough for the flames of eternal damnation to recognize it, ignite, and suck Cujo the Antichrist back into the abyss. Of course, this ritual involves being within biting distance of a hellhound while it tries to kill you, all while maintaining direct eye contact like you’re in a really high-stakes staring contest. But hey, Mike’s committed now. Literally. He bought an international plane ticket.

 

“A tattoo against evil, that’s your whole goddamn plan?”

Armed with his homemade holy sign and a lot of righteous dad energy, Mike lures Lucky into a final showdown at his work plant, where Lucky transforms into a hellhound with glowing eyes and a bad attitude. Mike pulls out his cross-shaped MacGuffin, holds it up to Lucky’s face, and just like that, demon dog becomes demon toast. The family is freed from their puppy-induced possession. In the end, the Barrys prepare for a vacation as if nothing happened. Then Charlie casually mentions that there were ten puppies in the original litter. Only one went up in flames. That means nine more Satan dogs are still out there somewhere, possibly plotting a coup in suburbia or running for student council.

 

“Son, that’s someone else’s problem.”

And it’s all played completely straight, which is part of the joy. There’s no wink to the camera, no tongue-in-cheek dialogue. This is a movie that wants you to genuinely fear a possessed German Shepherd who can apparently start fires with his mind. In a way, that sincerity becomes its biggest strength. It’s trying, darn it. Everyone is trying. And that’s what makes it endearing.

Stray Observations:

• The film was inspired by the seventh episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, “The Devil’s Platform.” This movie could have definitely benefited from some Darren McGavin.
• The leader of the cult is played by Martine Beswick, who starred in two Bond films, From Russia with Love and Thunderball, and to say this is a step down would be a vast understatement.
• Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann had previously played siblings in the Disney classic, Escape to Witch Mountain. Luckily, in that film, they only had creepy Ray Milland and Donald Pleasence to contend with.
• Kim Richards was not new when it came to demonic dealings. She and her sister, Kyle Richards, were menaced by the demonic menace in The Car.
• If your maid claims your dog is evil and is then found mysteriously burned to death in her own room, that very night, maybe take her claim a little more seriously.
• When your dog tries to mentally force your hand into the spinning blades of a lawnmower, and you do nothing, what follows is really on you.

 

Credit to Crenna, he sells the hell out of this scene.

The director, Curtis Harrington, was no stranger to horror—particularly the restrained variety of psychological or supernatural horror. Harrington had a solid career helming atmospheric genre films like 1961’s Night Tide and 1966’s Queen of Blood, both of which did far more with similarly modest means. But here, he seems boxed in by the constraints of both television censorship and an anemic script. To his credit, he treats the material with absolute seriousness. There’s no camp in his direction, even though the premise (a demonic German Sheppard) practically begs for it. He attempts to evoke menace through slow zooms, wind effects, and low-angle shots of the dog that are clearly meant to imply a supernatural presence. To be fair, with his budget, implying the supernatural was the better way to go, as the few times we see the Devil Dog in all its “Glory,” the results were less than impressive.

 

Are we supposed to find this scary?

The film leans heavily—and I mean leaning-on-a-broken-crutch heavily—on a single special effect: glowing eyes slapped over the dog like someone discovered the “demonic stare” filter in a 1970s editing bay and just went to town. These optical overlays are reused so often that you start to feel bad for the film reel. If the dog isn’t glowing, nothing’s happening. If the dog is glowing, still—nothing’s happening. There’s a hilarious commitment to doing absolutely nothing else visually to suggest supernatural horror. The dog just sits there. Maybe he turns his head slightly. Cue the glowing eyes. Cue the exact same ominous wind sound. Again. And again. It’s less “possessed hellhound” and more “dog has allergies and is glaring at you.”

 

All in all, it’s less Hound of Hell and more Dog of Mild Inconvenience.

Now let’s talk about Richard Crenna. A TV staple and reliable “dad under duress,” Crenna commits to this like he’s in The Exorcist. His descent into paranoia, his desperate search for answers, and his eventual spiritual showdown with the dog are all delivered with the gravitas of Shakespeare. There’s something hilarious and kind of awesome about watching a middle-aged suburban dad throw hands with a hellhound, like he’s channelling Charlton Heston. The finale might be low on budget, but it’s high on energy. It’s the kind of climax where you know the filmmakers threw everything they had at the screen—and then added another close-up of the big glowing dog for good measure.

 

“The power of Christ compels you!”

As for the rest of the cast. Yvette Mimieux, who has maybe four actual expressions in the film, is asked to do a lot of staring off into the distance while under the influence of a Satanic dog. Playing “Possessed Housewife” like she’s taken a full Xanax and is waiting for direction. Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann are perfectly adequate as children slowly succumbing to devil-dog hypnosis. Their transformation from fresh-faced suburban innocents to junior Satanists is handled with the steady professionalism of kids who grew up doing this sort of thing on sound stages between Disney telefilms. Neither of them is given much emotional range to work with — this is less The Exorcist and more After-School Special Goes to Hell — but they do what they can. Considering the dog was probably getting more notes from the director, they both hold their own.

 

The Manson Family meets the Brady Bunch.

The real villain here is the script, which somehow manages to stretch about 15 minutes of plot into a 90-minute movie. The pacing is glacial. There are long scenes of absolutely nothing happening. Characters repeat themselves, stare out windows, or get stared at by the dog. Rinse and repeat. But what can you expect from a film that dares to ask: “What if Satan wanted to destroy the world… one suburban family at a time… and his weapon was a German Sheppard?” It’s slow, cheap, and way too serious for its own good—but it’s also weirdly fascinating in that TV horror meets Hallmark drama with Satanic side salad kind of way.

 

“Couldn’t we have rented a better place for our Satanic rituals?”

In conclusion, Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell is a strange, sincere, and thoroughly entertaining slice of 70s TV horror. It’s never scary—not really—but it’s always watchable. From its dead-serious tone to its loopy supernatural plot, it’s the kind of movie you laugh at, then weirdly admire for having the guts to take itself so seriously.