Barking Dogs Never Bite

 (2000) ***1/2

A man who is losing sleep do to his neighbor’s noisy dog decides to kill the dog to put an end to it. He snatches the little mutt and takes it to the basement of his apartment building but finds he doesn’t have the balls to kill it in cold blood so he just locks it in a cabinet. A few days later he sees a missing dog flyer with a picture of the pooch stating that the dog has a throat condition and can’t bark, he took the wrong dog. He runs to the basement only to find the janitor happily making a stew from the dead dog. He then finds the offending dog who belongs to a little old lady in his building so he must devise a plan to snatch it. He does so and pitches the pooch off the roof this time but a couple of neighbor girls spot him and try to chase him down. He gets away only to find his pregnant wife at home with a brand new dog that she just bought. Resigned to his fate he takes the dog for a walk in the park and accidentally loses it and now must find the dog before the janitor or the homeless wanderer decide to make a meal out of it.

More dark comedy with horror undertones, the film states before it begins that no animals were harmed in the making of it but I’ll be damned if those scenes didn’t look real to me. This film really hits close to home for me, I have a new neighbor who is also my friend. I love her to death but she has two pint-sized mutts that yip all day long. I can truly feel for this guy because that high-pitched barking can grate on the nerves like nails on a chalkboard. Now I have gone a more conventional route, I bought a dog whistle and when they go off I blow it. Doesn’t always work but most of the time it shuts them up. Still it was fun to watch this and fantasize about how quiet it would be if they were gone. What’s the life expectancy of those little dogs? Just wondering so I can start counting down the years. I may be a crazy cat lady, but at least my cats are quiet.