dog | Through the Shattered Lens

I love South Park and, when I decided to list my ten personal favorite episodes, I thought this would be an easy article to write. How wrong I was. It’s hard to narrow 203 episodes down to 10 when you happen to love 193 of them. As I struggled to settle on my ten, I did a google search to see what other South Park fans had listed as their top ten episodes. What I discovered was that a lot of people had a top ten list and no one seemed to be in agreement. I guess that’s why I love South Park. It’s a show that people either love or hate, often for the exact same reasons.

I first truly discovered South Park when I was 18 and the show, itself, was either 7 or 8. Don’t get me wrong. I knew about the show and I’d seen the occasional episode (though my mom would always promptly change the channel if she walked into the room and saw it on the TV). But, as far as becoming a true “fan” of the show, I arrived late. Perhaps as a result, my list of favorite episodes is pretty much dominated by the latter seasons of the show (though I did come very close to putting Gnomes on the list).

10) The List (Original Airdate: November 14th, 2007) — Okay, technically The List isn’t really one of the best episodes of South Park but it’s always made me laugh, largely because me and my girlfriends used to obsessively make lists like the one in this episode. We also always took it way too seriously, even though the police were never called and I don’t think anyone ever ended up pulling a gun on anyone else.

9) You Got F’d In The A (Original Airdate: April 7th, 2004) — Not only is this episode of perfect parody of You Got Served, it’s also full of priceless WTF moments like the duck dancing to a song about Ketamine, Randy Marsh dancing to Achy Breaky Heart, and Butters killing even more people than usual as a result of his dancing. It also features the Goth kids at their negative best. Speaking as someone who used to have an exclusively black wardrobe even while she was fantasizing about becoming a world-famous prima ballerina, this episode gives me the best of both worlds. It was also one of the 1st episodes of the show that I ever sat down and truly watched.

8 ) Ginger Kids (Original airdate: November 9th, 2005) — Cartman reveals that along with being a racist and an anti-Semite, he’s prejudiced against redheads as well. Then he’s tricked into believing that he is a redhead and promptly organizes all the “gingers” in town into a cult. Admittedly, one reason I like this episode is because I’m a ginger kid myself and, oddly enough, this episode was first broadcast on my 20th birthday.

7) Miss Teacher Bangs A Boy (Original Airdate: October 18th, 2006) — Cartman as Dog, the Bounty Hunter. What else needs to be said? (Well, let’s not forget Ike’s facial expressions as Kyle tries to warn his parents about Miss Teacher.)

6) Night of the Living Homeless (Original Airdate: April 18th, 2007) — The homeless invade South Park and the end result is a brilliant parody of both zombie movies and liberal good intentions.

5) Whale Whores (Original Airdate: October 28th, 2009) — I like this episode for a lot of reasons. First off, the TV show Whale Wars is one of those smugly, self-satisfied shows that just deserves to be ridiculed on general principle. Secondly, it brought attention to just how barbaric Japanese whaling really is and it did so in a far more entertaining way than the Cove. But, ultimately, it all comes down to Cartman’s performance of Poker Face.

4) You Have 0 Friends (Original Airdate: April 7th, 2010) — This is the episode that made me proud to have deleted my Facebook account years ago.

3) Pandemic and Pandemic 2: The Startling (Original Airdates: October 22nd and 28th, 2009) — Yes, a lot of South Park fans disliked the two Pandemic episodes but I loved them. Along with ridiculing the current “home video horror” craze (which would later be epitomized by the ludicrous Paranormal Activity), the show also worked as a wonderful commentary on the whole series itself. From the minute Craig said, “You know, this is why no one else wants to hang out with you guys…,” Pandemic had me. Of course, needless to say, there’s also nothing cuter than a guinea pig in a pirate costume.

2) Go God Go and Go God Go Part XII (Original Airdate: November 1st, 2006 and November 8th, 2006) — There’s a lot of reasons why I like these episodes but the main reason is that, speaking as a nonbeliever, I’ve always felt that a lot of comedies satirize organized religion (excluding, of course, Islam) because it’s an easy target as opposed to actually having anything interesting to say about it one way or the other. (Hello, Family Guy.) It takes more guts to satirize something like atheism, especially the Richard Dawkins brand of disbelief. Plus, the Sea Otters. You have to love the Sea Otters.

1) The Imaginationland Trilogy (Original Airdates: October 17th, 24th, and 31st, 2007) — I don’t know that there’s anything left to be said about Imaginationland so I will just say that the relevance of this trilogy — in which humanity’s imagination is threatened by a bunch of thugs and bullies — became all the more obvious after Comedy Central decided to censor South Park’s 201st episode to avoid hurting the feelings of terrorists.

I’ve always felt that a truly good movie should inspire the viewer to seek to confess something about themselves. So here’s my confession. When I was a toddler, I was mauled by a stray dog. I don’t remember it, of course but I still have the small scars on my left arm as proof. As a result, I’m scared of dogs and I always have been. I jump when I hear one barking and the sound of one growling can easily set off a panic attack. Whenever I see one nearby, regardless of whether it’s on a leash or not, my heart starts to race.

For that reason, I suppose it was inevitable that a movie like the 1976 Spanish production A Dog Called Vengeance would get to me.

The film opens in an unnamed South American country. Political prisoner Jason Miller escapes from a jungle prison. As he flees, Miller runs into a tracker and the tracker’s dog, a German Shepard named King. Miller kills the tracker and then continues to run. King, after a few rather sad scenes in which he tries to revive his dead master, gives chase.

And that, in short, is pretty much the entire 108-minute film. Miller runs and King chases. Whenever Miller thinks that he’s safe (whether he’s taking a bath in a river or making love to a woman who has agreed to hide him), that relentless dog shows up and tries to kill him. I have to admit that this movie did little to alleviate my fear of dogs because King is truly viscous. The scenes were attacks both Miller and other assorted humans left me cringing and I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that Miller looks to be truly scared during some of the attack scenes. King easily dominates the 1st half of this movie.

The 2nd half of the movie feels like a totally different movie from the first. Jason Miller, having reached the city, is reunited with his comrades in the revolution. Whereas the first half of the movie was almost wordless, the movie suddenly become a lot more talky as Miller and his associated debate the merits and morality of revolution. Personally, I prefer the second half if just because a nice element of moral ambiguity is introduced here as it becomes pretty obvious that the “revolutionaries” are just as corrupt as the country’s dictator. In the city, Miller finds himself still being pursued by his enemies but now his friends want him dead as well. And, of course, that dog shows up again as well…

Anatonio Isasi’s direction is, for the most part, strong and Jason Miller (best known as Father Karras in the Exorcist) gives a good, low-key performance as the film’s lead. But, of course, the real star of the movie is that damn dog and, despite not being a doglover, I have to admit that it did a pretty good job. Not only did I believe that dog wanted to kill Miller but I believed that he easily could as well. However, at the same time, it hard not to feel a little bit of admiration for King. He was just so compellingly relentless in his pursuit. It’s probably one of best unacknowledged canine performances in film history.

A Dog Called Vengeance is the epitome of the type of flawed yet oddly compelling film that could only have been made outside of the Hollywood system. By refusing to shy away from showing either the full savagery of the dog’s attacks or in man’s response to those attacks, director Isasi manages to craft a political allegory that also works as a simple thriller. By refusing to paint either Miller or the dog in purely black-and-white terms, he introduces a moral ambiguity that most Hollywood studios would never have the guts to even attempt. Tellingly, the most shocking and disturbing scene in the film is not one of King’s many attacks on Miller. Instead, it’s a scene in which our paranoid “hero” guns down an innocent dog while its 10 year-old owner watches in horror.

Unfortunately, A Dog Called Vengeance isn’t an easy film to find. I saw it as part of the Grindhouse 2 DVD compilation and the transfer — taken straight from a VHS release — was terrible with frequently blurry images and terrible sound. To a certain extent, this did give an authentic “grindhouse” feel to the experience of watching the movie but it doesn’t change the fact that it took a while to get used to just how bad the movie looked. Luckily, the transfer seemed to improve as the film went on and, by the end of the movie, was no longer an issue.