In short: Trapped (1973)

aka Doberman Patrol

Chuck Brenner (James Brolin) is in a bit of a complicated divorce situation right now. His ex-wife Elaine (Susan Clark) is just about to move to Mexico with her new husband David (Earl Holliman) and her and Chuck’s daughter (Tammy Harrington), and relations are understandably strained. On the day of their departure Chuck, trying to shorten the wait for some change for a doll he was buying for his kid just before the store closed (it’s – needlessly -complicated) by having a smoke in one of the few places in the department store where smoking is actually okay, the rest rooms(!), is mugged and struck unconscious by two criminals of dubious talent.

When he wakes up, he is trapped in the department store and soon finds himself confronted with a very special security measure. Apparently, the powers that be are in favour of just letting half a dozen kill crazy attack dogs roam the store over night without any human supervision, so Chuck has to use all his wits and physical strength to survive.

Outside, Elaine and especially David start worrying about him, doing some slow detective work to find him.

Frank De Felitta’s (of The Entity fame) ABC movie of the week is a fine example of the form, conquering the relatively minimalist production values of this sort of thing via clever suspense filmmaking, as is typical of the better of these films.

De Felitta (who also wrote) makes great use of Brolin’s often underused abilities as a physical actor (see also Night of the Juggler) in the locked-in suspense sequences, while increasingly constraining the character physically and emotionally. For this is a film very interested in portraying the mental toll the physical strain, the horror of the situation and his wounds will take on its main character. It uses simple yet highly effective methods (there is Vaseline on the camera involved, it seems) to convey Chuck’s increasing desperation and physical and mental exhaustion. The dog actors are also good enough to present a credible threat, particularly when the direction uses every possibility to make put them above our protagonists or in other positions where they seem to physically dwarf Brolin.

The film’s other plot thread with the search for Chuck is less obviously engaging. It is slower, with quite a few TV clichés and very 70s character psychology (my working theory at this point is that all 70s scriptwriters read the same two self help books and confused that with a knowledge of psychology). Yet it is also a necessary part of the film, keeping the inevitable slow moments away from Chuck’s dog adventures, and clearly added with the understanding that you can’t escalate the man versus dog centre of the film endlessly without it becoming slightly silly.

This approach does work out well for Trapped in the end, leaving it as yet another fine example of what talented filmmakers were able to create inside of the constraints of the TV movie form.

Three Films Make A Post: An All-New Chiller for Halloween!

La Influencia aka The Influence (2019): As you know, only Spanish filmmakers have the good taste to try and adapt Ramsey Campbell. Alas, Denis Rovira van Boekholt’s adaptation of a very fine novel isn’t as strong as it could be. The director is certainly great with the more technical aspects of creating a creepy mood and uses that bane of contemporary horror, the jump scare, sparingly, but he tends to overplay his hand increasingly the longer the film goes on, betting on the creepy and loud image where a calmer and softer touch would work much better, often ignoring perfectly obvious avenues for the kind of psychological horror asked for here and instead going for shouting “HORROR!” into the audience’s faces. The script has some curious weaknesses too, becoming unspecific in the most inopportune moments, and having some trouble organizing certain plot threads (watch who knows what and when about a certain medallion, for example). And while there is strong, horrific imagery in the film, van Boekholt isn’t quite the stylist yet to pull through on this alone.

The Monkey’s Paw (1948): Before I randomly stumbled upon this adaptation of W.W. Jacobs’s classic story directed by Norman Lee and “associate directed” by Barbara Toy, who also co-wrote (and would go on to become a Land Rover based exploration writer), I didn’t know it existed. Not that I missed much: this is a typical case of a film that takes a small, short gem of a story and tries to bring it up to film length (in this case only an hour, but still) by adding lots of uninteresting business that distracts from the core of the tale and more background material that’s no use either, as well as by making changes to the source material that lessen it. Only in a couple of scenes do the directors find a moment or two between thrilling in the rambling of an elderly Irish rogue and listening to drawn out scenes of people repeating things we already know when things become somewhat creepy – the final sequence is moody, if still worse than the one in the story.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981): And because this is clearly, Three Halloween-Ready Films Seen By A Grump, why not end on me being down on what for many a person with good taste and style is one of the great TV horror movies? And it’s not that I don’t see the craftsmanship in Frank De Felitta’s direction and J.D. Feigelson’s script, or can’t abstractly admire how much atmosphere they get out of little.


It’s just never been a film that grabbed me, and my recent re-watch didn’t change that fact. I think my main problem with the film is that I’m not that fond of the part of the horror genre that’s all about horrible people getting their comeuppance. That approach to horror just has too much of the old testament and fire and brimstone preachers to ever make me really happy. Not that Dark Night is all fire and brimstone, mind you, it’s really a focussed and calm film, all considered. It’s just not for me.