D2D entry #46: Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World (1973, Joseph McGrath)
(Featured in Dusk to Dawn #1.)
This is the part I was dreading. On most if not all of the Dusk to Dawn tapes, in the middle of the morass of violence and titties, there are trailers for kid’s films. Invariably, these films will be cheap-looking, lowest-common-denominator matinee fodder which beleaguered parents are expected to leave their undiscriminating toddlers. Many of them are butt-ugly live-action versions of fairy tales, dubbed imports released by Childhood Productions (“In Storybook Color!”).
Digby isn’t one of those; instead, it’s a British original about a sheepdog that consumes an experimental chemical and grows to unearthly proportions. It’s at least more pleasant to look at than something like The Wonderful Land of Oz, but that’s about all it has going for it. It’s a piss-awful parade of buffoonery in kid-friendly clothing, broad as an elephant’s ass and twice as dumb. Digby makes one strive for the relative nuance of a Carry On film.
The most/least impressive aspect of this is that, having come up with a premise, the filmmakers then spend much of the film treating said premise as an inconvenience. The ginormous dog damn near seems an afterthought — through the first two acts, more of the film is taken up with kerfuffle about governmental inter-office machinations related to the missing chemical and/or the relative desirability of Billy’s mom (a government scientist) than with the very idea of a sheepdog the size of the Colossus of Rhodes. When the third act rolls around, director Joseph McGrath suddenly remembers that, according to the title, his film is about the biggest dog in the world rather than the love lives of British scientists. But he doesn’t seem too happy about it.
As much as I hate this film for wasting my time, though, there’s a part of me that feels bad about applying this level of loathing to something so innocuous. Digby isn’t evil or meretricious. It’s perfectly fine for kids. McGrath means well in that he wants nothing more than to entertain your young’uns for an hour and change. It’s just that he goes about it so goddamned poorly.
