Dear DVD companies (or Magnolia in this instance), this is why we sometimes want to shake our fists at you and scream into the heavens.
Bong Joon-ho’s feature length debut, “Barking Dogs Never Bite,” quietly lands on DVD this month on July 20 via Magnolia Home Entertainment.
Had we not spotted it at a video store last night, we would never have known and wouldn’t be able to tell fans of the South Korean auteur’s early film.
The debut from the filmmaker behind Playlist favorites “Memories Of Murder,” “The Host” and this year’s Hitchock-ian/Kafka-esque murder mystery “Mother” centers on an unemployed grad student (Sung-jae Lee) with an expectant wife who is driven to distraction by a yapping dog located somewhere in his large apartment complex. Determined to relieve his annoyance, he sets off to take extreme action against his tormentor; an action that will come to haunt him.
It’s a film that came out in 2000, we’ve been trying to get a hold of for ages and finally saw when BAM did a recent BJH retrospective in March. While not as taut and thrilling as the films that would follow, “Barking Dogs Never Bite” is still rich and comical and an interesting first step for what has turned out to be one of our favorite international directors.
Now Magnolia, please give us a head’s up on these types of releases already. Here’s an old trailer.