The film is almost like a Friday the 13th sequel with a killer dog instead of a maniac in a hockey mask. Every set-up is staggeringly predictable. This is one of those nastily moralistic horror films where every victim has their fate stamped on their forehead and is made to deserve their death – the paperboy gets it because he throws a paper and laughs when it hits the dog; the postie gets his leg bitten off because he is defends himself against dogs with a pepper spray; William Sanderson is a sadist who tortures the tied-up dog with a blowtorch; and the heroine’s boyfriend Frederic Lehne is conceited. The film quickly collapses into the completely laughable. None more so than the scenes where the dog chases a cat up a tree then devours it whole, or where the boyfriend finds that the dog has attempted to kill him by biting through his brake cable. In one touch of utter laughability the dog’s urine melt fire hydrants – the boyfriend is dispatched in by having the dog piss on his face, which must be some sort of filmic first. Then there is the dog’s romantic romp with the neighbouring bitch Heidi which the film hysterically tries to direct as the canine equivalent of a romantic scene, all accompanied by the song Puppy Love.

The film clearly has no idea of what it is talking about when it gets to genetic engineering. It seems to regard tree-climbing and chameleon changing as instant abilities that one can just snip from another animal and graft onto dog genes. In actuality the reason that cats are able to climb trees and dogs can’t is because of the musculature in their legs and the relative lightness of weight – dogs can’t climb trees because they are unable to carry their own weight on their front paws.

The film stars Ally Sheedy, a former Brat Packer who by this point was struggling to find some sort of career after she became too old to play in preppie dramas. There’s still a girlish cuteness in the way Sheedy plays – she gives the impression of a twentysomething flake who needs to come down to Earth. She’s playing here almost the same role that she played in the runaway cute robot comedy Short Circuit (1986). What she needs is a solid dramatic role, something to break her image, although one doubts that Sheedy really has the acting ability to carry it off. [She did sort of later in High Art (1998)]. The reliable face amid the silliness is Lance Henriksen who gives the role a seriousness that the production does not deserve.