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www.dvdverdict.com - : In 1991, famed Hollywood screenwriter, Michael Tolkin (best known for The Player and the recent Changing Lanes) wrote and directed one of the rare secular films to deal realistically and respectfully with the religious ideal of the Apocalypse. Entitled The Rapture, and concerned with a sexually indiscriminate telephone operator who eventually finds Jesus as the Day of Judgment looms ahead, it managed a rare feat in New Testament storytelling. It grounded its Seven Seals rhetoric within the debauched world of swingers, and managed to both champion and challenge the Biblical version of the end of the world. With almost no special effects and a great deal of imagination and invention, Tolkin delivered a chilling, blunt examination of faith and fear. One of the sad mysteries of digital mastering is that a stellar film like The Rapture remains unreleased while a steaming stream of warthog piss like Mad Dogs gets a DVD release. This quasi-Revelation retardation treads the same sacraments as Tolkin's tale of the famed Four Horsemen and their trip across the sky. It also relies on inference and suggestion to sell its spectacle, having, perhaps, spent the majority of their F/X budget on curries, vindaloos, and over-fried fish and chips. But where The Rapture had some thought and idealism behind it, Mad Dogs is a sci-fi flop devoid of any inner meaning. Most speculative fiction has a point to make outside its alien antics and robot rebellions. Usually, sci-fi films are veiled lectures on tolerance, equality, or liberty. Mad Dogs has no central message, no desire to analogize or make metaphor out of its arch Armageddon. It's just a series of buzzwords, half-baked future speak, and the typical ''take the piss out'' attitude regarding city, state, and religion. more...
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