Rabid Dogs (Cani arrabbiati)

Mario Bava directed the Italian thriller Rabid Dogs (Cani arrabbiati). Better known for colourful horror, Bava here changes course: the story leans on realism and plays out largely in real time. The film runs 93 minutes and was shot in Italian.

The plot centres on the escape of a three-man gang after a payroll robbery. Fleeing the police, the robbers abduct a young woman and press a man travelling with his sick child into serving as their driver. The cast includes Riccardo Cucciolla, Don Backy, Lea Lander, Maurice Poli, George Eastman and Erika Dario. The screenplay is by Sandro Parenzo and Bava.

It is adapted from Michael J. Carroll's short story "Man and Boy", published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. After three weeks of shooting, producer Roberto Loyola went bankrupt, leaving the unfinished picture shelved amid rights problems for over two decades. Once Lander bought the rights it appeared on home video from the mid-1990s in assorted cuts, with scenes partly reshot, added or dropped. One of these editions, Kidnapped, was prepared under the supervision of Bava's son Lamberto Bava and Alfredo Leone. The story has since been remade twice: by Mario Imperoli in 1976 and as a Franco-Canadian production by Éric Hannezo in 2015.