Review: Police Dog

 

Tim Turner shifts gears from being a top beat cop to training a police dog. He’s tasked with training Rex, an unruly German Shepherd who will also be staying with him. Rex has a bit of a biting problem and also gets in the way of Turner’s relationship with his girlfriend (Joan Rice). John Le Mesurier plays Turner’s superior officer, whilst a young Christopher Lee turns up as a cop on the receiving end of Rex’s embedding teeth.

 

Trying to get through as many Christopher Lee film credits as possible leads one to happen upon some rather odd entries in his filmography. This harmless 1955 film from writer/director Derek N. Twist (whose most prominent credit was editing Hitchcock’s classic “The 39 Steps”) was little more than a curio for me. It’s a C-grade, back-half of a double bill at best. If you’re an “Inspector Rex” fan you might get a bit more out of it than me, it’s along similar lines. The dog is even named Rex. It kinda reminded me of all those animal-starring TV show like “Skippy” and the aforementioned “Inspector Rex” with the animal solving crimes every week.

 

To be honest I actually didn’t even like the dog. It’s noisy and seemingly quite hostile. German Shepherds are a bit hit and miss with me as it is, some are lovely and sweet, but some are intimidating and this one’s an angry prick. Lead actor Tim Turner is bit of a bore. As for Mr. Lee, he plays a cockney cop who gets bitten by the dog, presumably because Rex was seeing something sinister in Lee’s cinematic future. His fear of the dog is for me the film’s highlight, and unlike a lot of his early roles this is a legit supporting role instead of a bit part. The film is cute, but it’s not much of a film running about 70 minutes in length.

 

Rating: C

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