Rabid Dogs

Rabid Dogs (Cani arrabbiati, 1973) is an Italian crime thriller from Mario Bava that you can watch online on iFILM. Nearly the whole film plays out inside a single car, and the trapped air only makes it worse.

A robbery goes wrong, and three criminals tear across Rome trying to shake the police. To slip away clean, they grab hostages: a man rushing a gravely ill child to the hospital, and a young woman pulled off the street. What follows is a long, sweltering drive where every turn could be the last and the kidnappers crack faster than the fuel gauge drops. Riccardo Cucciolla plays the cornered father, Lea Lander the woman forced to hold her nerve, while George Eastman and Maurice Poli make the gunmen impossible to read.

Bava, a giant of Italian horror, set the Gothic aside here for a brutal road-bound thriller that lands a vicious twist at the very end. Tangled rights kept the film shelved for years before it finally reached audiences, and today it is prized as one of the director's nastiest pieces. If you go for hard-edged 1970s European crime, this delivers. Stream Rabid Dogs (1973) online on iFILM.