Love on a Leash (2011)

Director: Fen Tian

Screenplay: Fen Tian

Cast: Jana Camp as Jana; Aneese Khamo as Prince; Gloria Winship Ayon as the Mother; Shane Ayon as the Store Owner; Michaelina Lee as the Friend

[Major Spoilers Throughout]

The cover of this straight-to-DVD film looks ridiculous - a blonde woman hastily put together with a Labrador in a suit, holding a leash in its mouth and extending a paw out. For whatever reason, it's developed a little cult specifically on the film website Letterboxd, the reason why I even learnt of this film in the first place. It's a dumbfounding project, and as the 2010s leaves us it is littered with these oddities, this up there alongside The Evil Within (2017) and Flexing with Monty (2010) in the level of strangeness, but when one was a Getty using his millions to make a film, the other an unfinished psychodrama of perversity and Catholic guilt, Love on a Leash is a very low budget and haphazardly made interpretation of the Princess and the Frog with a dog.

The first question to ask is who director -writer Fen Tian is. There's not a lot on Tian barring the fact her IMDB talks of her having one acting role, a tiny one, in The Joy Luck Club (1993) and that she made one other film beyond her debut, Forbidden Kiss (2012).  The production company Fenix Pictures who made the film is better known for many films of Ulli Lommel, the former Rainer Werner Fassbinder collaborator who became a director but eventually made a lot of straight to DVD horror this is not highly regarded. There's also a suspicion, beyond the many issues and aspects of Love on a Leash to deal with, that there's a cultural barrier at hand with this Chinese-American production. Tales with this idea, of a man who is turned into a dog before the film and can only change if he finds love, do exist in the West, but this type of modern day folklore tale is not commonly adapted in Hollywood films anymore barring a joke, let alone this elaborate and eventually getting into doomed love. A lot of this is just admittedly that, even if the tone found in Chinese cinema can be incredibly jarring in tone shifts for outsiders not used to it, this film is just strange without any real logical reason.

Love on a Leash is also quite a film of tragedy, belying its silly looking DVD cover. Before we even get into that however, you have a roughly put together work, and that's an understatement. A lot of Love on a Leash is a Frankenstein composite of scenes edited together with many improvised scenes surrounding a surprisingly well trained Labrador. It's a mess to be honest, probably one of the most technically disorganised I have seen even from someone who watches many low budget productions struggling against adversity.

There's also the dreadful decision to give the dog the voice, only heard by the viewer, of a chauvinistic arsehole who is meant to be funny. Out of everything in Love on a Leash, I adapted to how technically bad the film eventually but that creative decision to have a guy recording jokes at inappropriate moments is egregious, especially as he is a sexist pig for most of the film. Even when the character softens, and even becomes sympathetic as he learns humility onscreen, the version voiced in the other scenes is only acceptable when he abruptly starts to sing constantly.

Mostly this is egregious because, contrary to the look of the film, Love on a Leash is a depressing film whose tonal films are fascinating, ninety minutes an emotional rollercoaster between the presentation and then the various aspects of the film dramatically. It initially starts as the secondary tale of Jana (Jana Camp), a meek and henpecked young woman, on an incredibly peculiar start, where two tangents with two possible suitors involves two potential separate films, one effectively Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993), when her Chinese co-worker is a gay man wanting a fake marriage to hide his real self from his family, the other a perplexing tale in itself of adoptive families of matriarchal women against forced sterilisation and creepy Oedipal restrictions. That the film discards both, in favour of a plot that's just as perversely compelling, is a sign of this being something very different.

For starters, Jana's story gets dark, even if an attempted suicide by pills is undercut by the talking dog making jokes before and after whilst blundering about. The tone is a huge aspect with the film you need to adapt to even after you accept it's been cobbled together in post production to an extreme, with sound cutting around harshly or nonexistent for added dissonant effect. This is where you have broad stereotypes, like a broad foreign female neighbour trying to get the female lead to be hitched for her mother's sake, only to get bleak. Jana losing her friend, losing contact with her family, only because in spite of eventually a romance where the dog is finally able to turn into a stud Prince Charming, he can only become human at night because he wasn't sincere enough.

All of this is belied by the chaotic tonal shifts. It gets kinky - can a woman love a man who becomes man's best friend in the day, putting on a dog collar on him for sexy photos at some point never explained - and played for slapstick, such as the diner with her boss that goes amiss with her inexplicably falling into the swimming pool and needing canine rescue. Its chaotic keeping up with the film, which unlike many in this however never falls into a slump of predictable storytelling, which is the aspect which redeems this mess in many ways; so much is roughly put together, shots likely stolen and abruptly put together, even David Bowie's China Girl making an audio appearance with a sense it wasn't even paid for. There's always something in terms of a twist or an emotionally shocking plot point that is going to frustrate some viewers, be it all the depressing material where lead actress Jana Camp is continually crying or ridiculous, but is compelling nonetheless.

Production wise, many of the film feels like it was shot on a store bought camera with the most distinct trademark being the prominence of green in production design in Jana's apartment and some low budget computer effects, mainly due to the mysterious magical figure behind the dog's situation found at a duck pond in the park. There's an unexpected rawness to the film, particularly with the locations used in the film that in some cases do deserve credit for being distinct, particularly as there are clear excuses to show Chinese American culture which I am all in favour for, such as a gallery exhibition where memorably the dog is not allowed in to his annoyance.

The other thing Love on a Leash does that few films in this possible possess is to stick to its ambitions. "Bad" cinema, when viewed ironically or not, can have really generic plots, many ultimately bad in the truest sense as they have no convictions for taking risks. Love on a Leash is a rare exception that Fen Tian is playing for a bitter sweet tragedy, where a true love is stuck with a friction that cuts Jana off from her friends and family, with the dog even being run over and dying. I'd never expect a film like this, which is an utter mess, to suddenly warm the heartstrings when, in old age makeup, Jana will meet her true love again in the conclusion. There's clearly a story type here more in common with Asian cinema of the normalcy of the supernatural, which actually has to be applauded for its bravado. That's ultimately, somehow, why I admire Love on a Leash as one of the few films that can overcome such crippling technical flaws, and misguided creative decisions such as bad talking dogs making jokes, to be something honestly rewarding to sit through.

Abstract Spectrum: Bizarre/Psychotronic/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez! (2012)

Directors: Everything is Terrible!

Cast: Hundreds of dogs and James Belushi's reaction faces

To begin with, this compilation of existing footage comes from Everything Is Terrible, a video blogging website whose origins go as far back as 2000 but properly launched their website in 2007, collecting together various pieces of filmed ephemera, for YouTube and online videos, publics screenings and DVD releases. In this case they can be can be seen as cinema's version of "plunderphonics", a term especially with the group Negativland who used existing sources to subvert their content and wider meanings.

Everything Is Terrible were likely helped through their existence by the burgeoning fascination with eighties VHS culture, purveyors and archivists of all the bizarre self released material even into the nineties that was available in the United States, even commercial tapes from that era onwards that we look on in hindsight at on YouTube dumbfounded with. The British like myself know this through anything from exercise videos and instructional films, but the United States is a significantly bigger country, with a bigger industry, and Everything Is Terrible can also add to this the likes of public access television, able to draw on the religious (Christian work about a dog puppet praying to Jesus) to whatever odd things are possibly found at the back of a garage.

Poochiewoochies admittedly, in its tale to retell Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain (1973) with dog videos, pulls from more Hollywood films and straight to video work, but when you see the likes of the dog message segments, that's the type of work EiT is famous for, cutting out some of the choice titbits alongside the most banal of dog films to create this production. Also, yeah, let's step back as The Holy Mountain in cult circles is a big film, Jodorowsky off the back of funding from the Beatles manager Allen Klein making a tale of spiritual discovery which was surreal and truly bizarre. The initial text is already weird, so this framework retold with dogs is admittedly intriguing. It is one of Doogiewoogiez's crutches to hinder it however as, whilst it could work perfectly as a template for an odyssey, it's barely used and vague here as a structure.

Why was it used? Possibly the idea of "God = Dog" joke and there is the scene where the group of followers wishing to become enlightened have their consciousnesses connected to an actual dog, a sequence whose sound clip to first person dog shots from various sources does work in Doogiewoogiez. As a result, the vagueness of the structure means this still requires the other film to work, which wouldn't be an issue weren't it not for the fact that it's left as a disjointed collection of pieces which can tire without context. The structural choice only works occasionally when it's explicitly pulling from the source material, including the introduction of those followers, who were given little stories each within The Holy Mountain, here used to go into segments such as dogs and sex, dogs in sports etc.

It does tap into the really questionable attitudes we have when it comes to our pets, and I say this as someone who grew up with dogs (specifically boxers) all my life and love them. Alongside our habit to fixate over animals even over fellow human beings - such as is the case with us British - alongside the complacent view we have about how unique human beings are. This works both ways as, in one of the best aspects of the film, the research done, you see just how much embarrassing material our four legged friends have had to put up with, be it being forced into costumes or a cavalcade of badly animated mouth movements plastered over their faces. Even before I consider my own opinions, that as there is no Dr. Doolittle available, and thus we cannot truly talk to dogs and gauge a similar intelligence to ours or not, the deep pit of dog films and television churned out since the dawn of cinema, be it monochrome scenes of dogs being dressed like cowboys to Marmaduke's artificial distorted facial features, is a real sign of how we've come to abuse this is cinema, even before the film shows all the times in fiction dogs were kicked, threatened with being shot or having a blowtorch to their face in stories.

I say this as someone who argues no idea, even a dog being allowed to play American football as in one film here, is inherently bad, and that a great funny dog film can be made, but that the evidence here shows all the ways we miss the mark without having to see the entire length of them. Some pretty infamous material makes its appearance. Poochinski (1990), a failed TV pilot about Peter Boyle being killed and returning back as an English bulldog puppet, or Karate Dog (2004), one of Bob Clark's last films about Chevy Chase as a dog who has eventually has a fight with Jon Voight in the finale. James Belushi also becomes the unofficial mascot for all the reaction shots he has over the film, all possibly because (like Cuba Gooding Jr and even older Vincent Price) he made one film involving a dog, K-9 (1989), which is gone to constnalty through the film for clips.

Many mainstream films like Snow Dogs (2002) and Air Bud (1997) appear. With all the narratives excised, you forget how bizarre a lot of these films are in hindsight, and there is a good moment where, in pain staking research, the same plot points are repeated together from these films, from child protagonists always losing parents to vague film disease/car crash incidents off-screen or how dog related genital/buttock trauma is a common joke throughout these films.

The reference to Negativland is appropriate as, honestly, there was many missed opportunities in terms of subverting their material. Negativland can be humorous but also hit salient points, and the only time Doogiewoogiez stands on that band's shoulders, heavy handed but perfectly justified, is the segment that starts with racial stereotypes (both dogs literally dressed as stereotypical African tribes people to the obsession with "urban" slang even from young male characters let alone dogs) before getting into the idea of dog breeds I myself have always had a concern about. The idea that the obsession with breeding exact breeds and marginalisation of "mongrels", if applied to human beings, would be eugenics, which EiT in their one great moment here don't pussyfoot around mocking, alongside bizarre clips like a British woman being interviewed and presuming because she has a Chihuahua, a dog of Mexican origins, it presumably likes Mexican food.

Mostly Doogiewoggiexz goes for obvious jokes, some choice cuts of weirdness that are too many to pick out, from farts being used to stop dog chupacabras, to dogs playing baseball. It does cause one to be amused that, in a hundred years, we've covered so much with dogs you can have the aforementioned brawl between Jon Voight and a CGI dog, or that certain actors like Cuba Gooding Jr. appear in these films in their long, varying careers. It's a shame the structure isn't enough still, the weakest material all the manipulation of used images into psychedelic video collage material, not exactly compelling to be frankly. The only aspect of those sequences, which look like the kind of online videos that became dime a dozen on YouTube, is how Harry the Bigfoot, from Harry and the Hendersons (1987), is an honorary member of that collage despite being a cryptozoological ape creature that the creators clearly were obsessed with since childhood.

The other issue is that frankly Doggiewoggiez is ironic to a fault. A sarcasm does feel pronounced throughout, and it's felt especially with the use of Christian material as there's always a cheapness to the humour, a laboured nature when the material itself, when bad, should be allowed to hang itself on its own petard, and other moments like the humanoid dog puppet who prays to God, who in scenes is panicked and scared, would be far more fascinating for me to see in their original context to unpick. Material like a young boy dancing and singing Magic Dance by David Bowie with actors in dog costumes, after a talking well has told him he can do so if he wishes to, is weird but there's a charm too, a production like this not realising that for every eyebrow raising and questionable piece there's others which are more sympathetic for me beyond taking lines of dialogue out of context for crude jokes or to be just laughed at. Yes, some of it deserves to be questioned, like Tim Allen in a family film being naked in front of his wife and kids after turning back from being a dog, but even the dippy and strange things like people who believing their dogs are psychics and reincarnated spirits are still human beings to be considered. And all of this is in knowledge that the project was always meant to be fun first; it's just that it needed to be more focused and sharper.

Abstract Spectrum: Kitsch/Psychotronic/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None