The Doberman Gang
The Doberman Gang
PG | 26 May 1972 (USA)
The Doberman Gang Trailers

After a failed bank robbery, an ex-con, an ex-waitress and a few of their friends train a pack of doberman dogs to rob a bank for them.

Reviews
Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Claire Dunne One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Scott LeBrun Eddie (Byron Mabe, "The Defilers") is a career criminal who's frustrated because he knows that human error can always derail otherwise well-planned heists. Then one night he witnesses some guard dogs in action, and is impressed by their intelligence and intimidation factor. Now he's got an ingenious plan: stage a bank robbery using Dobermans as the participants! He enlists the services of a veteran animal handler (Hal Reed, "The Zodiac Killer") soon to muster out of military service. Of course, the handler has more scruples than anybody else in the gang.At first, this viewer thought that this might make for pretty good, agreeably ridiculous family fare, but that's hampered somewhat by some violence and gore (and unpleasantness) near the end, not to mention the disagreeable attitude of Eddie, who's really a major league prick. The human cast deliver good performances; Julie Parrish ('Good Morning, World'), Simmy Bow ("Beetlejuice"), and JoJo D'Amore ("Alligator") round out the main cast. But it's the four legged cast members - given names like Pretty Boy Floyd, Dillinger, and Bonnie & Clyde - that win your hearts as they steal the loot.As with any heist movie, the story (concocted by Frank Ray Perilli ("Dracula's Dog") and Louis Garfinkle ("The Deer Hunter")) devotes much time to the intense preparation, and the viewer will marvel at the first-rate animal action, supervised by Karl Lewis Miller and Lou Schumacher, old hands at that sort of thing for many years. It's also noteworthy for being the earliest screen credit for the great film composer Alan Silvestri, who wrote the score (and songs) with Bradford Craig. Yes, this being a 70s flick, there is the standard inclusion of theme songs. But that ditty "Dog Honest Gang" is pretty catchy.Followed by three sequels.Seven out of 10.
George Taylor Dogs are the greatest, most noble animals in the world. They love humanity and will do anything, as this movie proves, for us. This is a really fun movie where a gang gets the idea to use Doberman's a quite intelligent breed, to rob a bank. The movie works well and the heist is well filmed. A really enjoyable, if silly, movie.
Jason Kleeberg "The doggonist gang that the world had ever seen..."At dinner one night, my father-in-law saw a Doberman on TV and asked if I had ever seen the movie where Dobermans rob a bank. I hadn't...but knew from that description alone that I had to track it down.It was released in 1972, directed by Byron Chudnow. Chudnow only directed four movies in his career...The Doberman Gang, The Daring Dobermans, The Amazing Dobermans, and Alex and the Doberman Gang. Pretty safe to say that this guy had an unhealthy obsession with these dogs. It stars TV journeyman actor Byron Mabe, Hal Reed and Julie Parrish, none of whom you've ever heard of.The story revolves around an ex-con named Eddie and his desire to rob a bank without the element of 'human error' once a bank job goes wrong. To do this, he and a dog trainer snag a pack of Dobermans and train them to rob a bank using whistles. Sound crazy? It is. It really is.The premise of this movie sounds a bit better than it actually is. What we actually get is about 10 minutes of set up, an hour of dog training, and a ten minute heist. A bunch of character decisions make no sense, none more than the fact that Eddie is about the least careful criminal one could be. He pulls a waitress that he's known for one night into the job because...well...sex, and when the dog trainer threatens to bolt, he basically lets him. He flat out deserves to get caught. At least the 70's music is 'groovy', featuring a song about the dogs that just classic(ly bad).I cannot recommend seeing The Doberman Gang. The only thing redeeming about this thing is the music and watching a bulldog try to run the doberman course.My final grade: D
MisterWhiplash I had to make sure not to lose it too much during the Doberman Gang, because simply put it's got the goofiest premise one could ever think to not imagine: dogs that rob banks. You got it, simply put, and trained by bank robbers who'd rather let the mutts get it done then do it themselves, in an elaborate scheme involving whistles made for each dog, OVER-elaborate training montages teaching the dogs how to, well, jump and bite the crap out of people, and throwing in a really inane romantic triangle between three main characters- the mastermind behind the caper, a waitress, and the dogs' trainer- leading up to an ending that had me laughing my head off not even caring what the hell had just happened. If I tried to explain it all it would make even less sense and one would wonder how in Heaven's name something like this could get funding. Well, it was the 70s, and movies like this filled a niche for kids wanting a quick fix of delirious hijinks and adults wanting a good nap. As an adult myself, however, the delirious part had me from start to finish.It's not just the dogs and getting trained, or how the robbery is planned and the dogs meant to be dispatched (and the wretched ways the filmmakers get around making it violent, but not quite violent enough for an R at the time), or the extraordinarily cheesy songs (by Alan Silvestri no less!), or that the filmmakers decided to throw in an unbelievably underdeveloped sub-plot involving the three main characters- scuse me, caricatures- or even that one of the bank robbers looks very oddly like Kurt Vonnegut. Actually, it's a sum of this and more, and it's got enough to laugh about for days. There's not a slice of logic to the proceedings, and one can figure on director Bryon Chudnow, who with one obscure exception directed nothing BUT Doberman movies for the rest of his career afterwords (yes, more than one; they even got Fred Astaire for the third movie), likes it that way. Bank robbery, of course, is never an easy thing, but the central joy of the Doberman Gang is that it's meant to look like it's nothing when planned to a T. In the midst of all this, dramatic tension or suspense is at zero, and the line between what may be meant as sick jokes or just so-serious-it's-funny bits (like the dog that, sad to say, get's run over, and the dog that comes by and just snatched up the leftover money).In truth, some of it is almost too goofy to really get into, and for kids that could in some weird chance come across it today some jokes will fly over heads (Bonnie and Clyde as names of the Dobermans, J. Edgar Hoover as the bulldog, who is maybe the most convincing and well-rounded character in the picture if that says anything). But for a certain section of fans of B-movies of the 1970s looking for something not as trashy or rough as an AIP picture may want to take a glance at this crazy turkey that, unfortunately in this day and age, could conceivably get a remake someday if it has not yet.