This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

This film had all the elements of a film gone wrong:an international cast,standard heist plot,Euro pop/jazz soundtrack,ham handed action and Jayne Mansfield. Could any film project have been more predestined to be awful?I was expecting so much worse. Imagine the surprise of discovering how much fun this movie was with all of it's sorry bits working together in some sort of obtuse harmony.The dialog is over the top outrageous. Check these three prizes just from the trailer:"Crackers, it's just mad money"...."You are rude dirty and ugly. We do not cater to rude,dirty,ugly men. Get out."Or better yet: Madame Benoit:"Where did you get this stuff? It's dishwater." Bartender: "It's the prunes, Madame.Since Socialism they don't let the peasants crush them with their feet any more. It impairs the flavor." Madame Benoit: "It's still dishwater."And those are just a few of a beginning to end feast of howlers. How could one not love dialog like this ? It's so absurd it's almost genius.To think Arthur Miller worked so hard on "The Misfits".I will have to watch the film again just to catch all the gems.And yet: Jayne Mansfield was never again more natural, seeming to have dispensed with the "Divoon" Marilyn parody and almost playing it straight. It could be the dubbing that made her seem more part of an ensemble rather than a running gag. Someone else dubbed her voice.It works and the dubbing is very well done for a 60s Euro film, everything is in harmony.It's an awful film on so many levels, but consistently awful from plot to soundtrack, to dialog. It's a package deal that works on all those levels because of it's awfulness. It's what makes "Dog Eat Dog" fun.The cast is interesting and watchable, the heavy breathing dialog worthy of John Waters, the euro artiness of it gives it an air of sophistication, even legitimacy that was probably never intended.An accident of a film: accidentally entertaining. One of those "so bad it's good" films. Perfect for a double bill with Elizabeth Taylor's "The Driver's Seat".Such a surprise to find it so entertaining as I was definitely expecting to feel depressed after watching Jayne Mansfield in it,as I did with "Las Vegas Hillbillies", "The Fat Spy" and "Single Room Furnished". Maybe this one was Jayne's last great film. Like Marilyn's "The Misfits".Would definitely watch it again.Not a waste of time at all. Definitely worth seeing.

All of the critical scorn directed at Dog Eat Dog is rather perplexing, since it's a tense, starkly photographed, bleak and sleazy shot of cool 60s crime melodrama.Dog Eat Dog is similar in its strange look and feel to Roman Polanski's Cul-de-Sac (there's even a bald creep who resembles Donald Pleasence), but with a more straightforward hard boiled edge and noirish dialogue, with Cameron Mitchell cynically dubbing Jayne Mansfield's breasts her "double indemnity".Shot in beautiful locations and full of interesting, unusual faces, this is a crazy winner that ought to please fans of Mitchell, Mansfield, or offbeat genre films and black comedies generally. Mitchell even gets to go nuts and tear apart a whorehouse, yelling incoherently about money and gasoline. Really, what could be better?

The first hour or so of this film seems to be one of those barely competent Euro-thrillers that smells of "deal" and little more.Evil killers laugh for 20 minutes at a time, a thug in a car tries to kill a pedestrian thug and the editing makes no sense, a voluptuous babe offers to sell out the entire male cast sequentially and all at once, we've all seen it a thousand times and on our own deathbeds we'll undoubtedly regret the time we wasted doing so.Then the picture goes off the rails, perhaps because of the three or maybe four directors. All pretense of continuity goes out the window, scars disappear and reappear on faces, characters die for silly reasons or no reason at all; basically staging and dialog disintegrate completely. We watch the film go around and around in ever-diminishing circles and finally disappear up its own backside.You think, "Oh, the poor actors," as they all get that haunted look, like "How did I ever get involved with this mess?" and "Who do I have to sleep with to get OFF of this picture?" and "Boy, will I murder my agent when I get back home!" and "Oh wow, I really need to go; I'll bet it's that schnitzel last night at the hotel." Jayne Mansfield does some of the best acting in the film, which'll give you some idea of what to expect. When Cameron Mitchell goes berserk and starts ripping up the furniture, he does it with a remarkably rehearsed air, along the lines of "We only have one sofa, so I have to get it right on the first take," and "Does Stuart Whitman have to put up with this stuff in his movies?" There is no psychological or sociological subtext to this film; it has no stylistic elegance or directorial signature hidden in a overlooked "B"; it is simply a desperate and cynical attempt to make money. The movie fails on every level. You don't even get to see Dubrovnik. Skip it.

IMDb's short plot synopsis is written better than anything I can come up with – "Three thieves rip off a shipment of used money being sent back to the US. As they are escaping the robbery (after having taken a hostage), they wind up on an island in a hotel with an apparently crazed manager and a building full of demented residents." If you're a fan of over-the-top, campy, Euro-heist films, Dog Eat Dog has got it all. Let's see – mix the iconic Jayne Mansfield, genre favorite Cameron Mitchell, $1,000,000 in stolen cash, a mysterious killer, a (supposedly) deserted island, and a jazzy score and you've got Dog Eat Dog. It may not be what some critics and others would call a "good" movie, but if you like this sort of stuff, it's a winner. These are some of the most eccentric characters I've run across. Jayne Mansfield plays Darlene, the negligee wearing female member of the gang of thieves. She has an annoying habit of beginning each sentence with the expression "Crackers!" I'm not sure why or what it means, but it's a hoot. She's also a complete nymphomaniac. Cameron Mitchell is the real tough guy of the group. He receives a head wound early on and refuses to wipe the blood and dirt off the side of his face for the entire movie – even though the film takes place of a couple of days time. Then there's the crazy old woman who owns the only house on the island. A nuttier old coot I don't think I've seen. You could spend considerable time just trying to figure her out. And that's just for starters. You've also got the hyena laughing third robber, the bald German butler, the hotel manger out for himself, or the hotel manager's virginal sister. It's this bizarre cast of characters each out for themselves that makes Dog Eat Dog so much fun.