White Dog

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White Dog

Directed by	Samuel Fuller
Produced by	Jon Davison
Written by	Romain Gary (novel) Samuel Fuller and Curtis Hanson (screenplay)
Starring	Kristy McNichol Paul Winfield Burl Ives Jameson Parker Samuel Fuller Paul Bartel Dick Miller Lynne Moody
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Cinematography	Bruce Surtees
Editing by	Bernard Gribble
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	July 7, 1982
Running time	84 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$8,000,000 (estimated)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

White Dog (1982) is a drama movie directed by Samuel Fuller, featuring Paul Winfield, Kristy McNichol, Jameson Parker, and Burl Ives, that went unreleased for years because of its theme and subject: that racism is taught and learned, not innate. The film’s score was provided by Ennio Morricone.

Loosely based on a 1970 French novel by Romain Gary, the plot of the film centres on an unmarried woman (McNichol) who takes in a stray white German Shepherd dog for her protection. What she does not know is that a white racist trained it to attack Black people on sight. Faced with either having the dog killed or retrained, she takes it to a Black dog trainer (Winfield), who undertakes the dog’s re-education as a personal challenge. Some people feared that White Dog would be a celebration of the racist attacks, and hence was very controversial.

As of 2007, the film has never been available on a legally licensed home video version in America. The Criterion Collection will release an edition of White Dog in 2008.^[1] The release date is unknown.