Atomic Dog

Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1997
Writer: Miguel Tejada-Flores
Cast: Daniel Hugh Kelly, Isabella Hoffman, Cindy Picket, Micah Gardener,
Katie Stuart a. o.

Due to a radiation leak, the Devil's Canyon Nuclear Power Plant is evacuated and sealed up. A janitor kept his puppy, Cerberus, in the plant and in the confusion during the evacuation the dog hides and is left behind.
   A year later weird things starts to happen. The Yates family are new in town and one evening Josh, the son, and their dog Trixie, goes with a gang of kids to the power plant. They catch a glimpse of a big dog slipping away into the darkness and some of the kids starts hunting it. Next day one of the kids is found dead, and Trixie is missing.
   Two months later she returns only to die after having two puppys. Josh and his little sister, Heather, takes care of the puppys, Lobo and Scamp, who grows bigger and bigger - and bigger... At the same time the dog from the power plant starts to sneak around their house.

One day Lobo gets agressive and attacks Josh and Heathers father. Both dogs are taken to the veterenary to see what's wrong. The vet suggest they get some expert help from the Yates' neighbour, Janice Rifkin, who just happens to be a professor and a specialist in carnivour behavior. Next day when the dogs are to be picked up, the vet is dead - killed by a dog and Lobo is gone.

There is some blood from the "killer" left at the vets' and when professor Rifkin analyzes it she finds an extreme amount of mutated cells. Seems like the animal has been exposed to high doses of radioactivity. Fear is spreading in town when they realise there is a mutated killer monsterdog on the prowl......

Atomic Dog is really just another B-movie, and I'm not quite sure why I liked it so much. Maybe cause it "feels" sort of classical and remind me about the sci-fi and horror films of the early 70s that I grew up with. And it does look quite cool when You see things through the dogs mutated atomic eyes.

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