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DOG DAYS IN THE
DOG DAYS IN THE
There’s something more than chillingly familiar about Mad Dogs, “a dark comedy of the apocalypse”, set just “one year from today.” According to writer Simon Louvish and director Ahmed A Jamal, makers of this new £350,000 British film, the landscape is recognisably urban London.
But while its main story – the free- wheeling tale of a devastating plague called Mad Dog Disease leading to a government cull and the banning of all canines from Britain – is invention, it certainly strikes several rather timely satirical notes.
As the dogs are rounded up, young drifter and certified schizophrenic Rabbie Burns (Iain Fraser) is starting to hear voices... including that of a talk- ing pig who entrusts him with a mis- sion impossible to save our planet.
Cast alongside newcomer Fraser and Indira Varma, as TV researcher Narendra, are more familiar faces like The Full Monty’s Paul Barber, Saeed Jaffrey, film-maker Mike Leigh (in a cameo), and Jonathan Pryce, as the Supreme Being.
Louvish, better known as writer of acclaimed film biographies on WC Fields and The Marx Brothers (his Laurel & Hardy is out this autumn), and Jamal, a veteran of documentaries for C4 and the BBC, claim their film “draws on sources as diverse as 1950s sci-fi movies and the vintage films of Hammer and Ealing.”
A “low-budget project with a high- budget look, utilising every penny,” Mad Dogs, produced by Poonam
Photos: Scenes from Mad Dogs; above left: Director Ahmed A Jamal
EXPOSURE • 26 & 27