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Bad Dog: A Vampire's Canine
The author of Matinee and Driven to Kill returns with the story of Aaron Sedgewood's dog, who turns into a teen-eating monster, and Aaron must race against time to transform him back into a loveable pet. Original.
- GenresHorrorParanormal
160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February 1, 1995
13 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 11, 2022
When a body disappears from the morgue, teenagers in Westlake begin to talk of a vampire in town. Aaron and his girlfriend, Katrina are on their way to their friend, Dan's New Years party, when their vehicle is attacked by a clawed, winged beast.
After finally escaping it, they take cover inside Dan's house, but not long after, the creature re-appears, banging at the windows.
Meanwhile, down in his father's lab, their classmate, Kenny gets bit by a flea that leaps from a dead body. He instantly becomes paralyzed and subsequently turns into a puddle of goo.
Dr. Emily Vanswift has created a genetically engineered Basset Hound - SPUDS - who escaped from her genetics lab and is now running loose in Westlake. SPUDS has a symbiotic relationship with these mutant fleas; they bite his food, liquifying it for him.
The classmates are basically running around town trying to stop the vampires, I guess.
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Confused as hell? Yeah, me too. It jumped into this super weird, complex and complicated plot within mere paragraphs of the beginning of the book. It was instantly a bizarre whirlwind with like 35 different characters to keep track of. I honestly had NO idea what was going on for 95% of this book.
I am beyond disappointed - I judged a book by its cover and thought this was a hidden gem. It looks great in my collection, but I promise you, you're not missing anything if you never get around to this one.
One star is purely for the cover art.
After finally escaping it, they take cover inside Dan's house, but not long after, the creature re-appears, banging at the windows.
Meanwhile, down in his father's lab, their classmate, Kenny gets bit by a flea that leaps from a dead body. He instantly becomes paralyzed and subsequently turns into a puddle of goo.
Dr. Emily Vanswift has created a genetically engineered Basset Hound - SPUDS - who escaped from her genetics lab and is now running loose in Westlake. SPUDS has a symbiotic relationship with these mutant fleas; they bite his food, liquifying it for him.
The classmates are basically running around town trying to stop the vampires, I guess.
---------------------------
Confused as hell? Yeah, me too. It jumped into this super weird, complex and complicated plot within mere paragraphs of the beginning of the book. It was instantly a bizarre whirlwind with like 35 different characters to keep track of. I honestly had NO idea what was going on for 95% of this book.
I am beyond disappointed - I judged a book by its cover and thought this was a hidden gem. It looks great in my collection, but I promise you, you're not missing anything if you never get around to this one.
One star is purely for the cover art.
April 6, 2024
Crikey, can I even explain the crackpot plot of this stinker? Basically, a genetically engineered dog has a symbiotic relationship with its fleas, in which the fleas liquify dangerous toxic wastes and the dog eats it up. A scientist created this dog to clean up toxic landfill waste created by the town vampire, Phil Bateman, who has been dumping animal by-products into the water. However, the dog gets loose and its fleas are instead liquifying humans. The vampire wants to capture the dog so that he can blame it for the deaths that he and the vampire army he is creating are committing. Aaron Sedgewood and his friends get caught up in the mayhem.
This was one confusing mess. It's all over the place. It's a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas that are not fully fleshed out, with far too many characters to keep track of for such a short book. None of the characters are memorable or stand out. The plot is chock-full of inconsistencies and holes. The teacher, Ms Nosferatu (groan), is described as having been found dead and her body subsequently going missing from the morgue, only to show up at the school and nobody blinks an eyelid. Aaron goes to see his girlfriend, Katrina, only to see her leaving the house (I think - it's badly described), but we then jump to the next day with him asking her where she went, and we don't get an answer. Why was that even there? Aaron and his friend, Dan, go to set a trap for the teen vampire army (don't ask me what said trap is), only for the police to show up and start shooting. Why were they there? Who called them there? Things wrap up with a deus ex machina ending to defeat an antagonist. And that teen vampire army? To be battled some day in a non-existent sequel!
There are the germs of some good ideas here, but this is a badly cobbled together mess that needed several revisions and rewrites before getting published. It was really ruff to get through. (I'll show myself out.)
This was one confusing mess. It's all over the place. It's a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas that are not fully fleshed out, with far too many characters to keep track of for such a short book. None of the characters are memorable or stand out. The plot is chock-full of inconsistencies and holes. The teacher, Ms Nosferatu (groan), is described as having been found dead and her body subsequently going missing from the morgue, only to show up at the school and nobody blinks an eyelid. Aaron goes to see his girlfriend, Katrina, only to see her leaving the house (I think - it's badly described), but we then jump to the next day with him asking her where she went, and we don't get an answer. Why was that even there? Aaron and his friend, Dan, go to set a trap for the teen vampire army (don't ask me what said trap is), only for the police to show up and start shooting. Why were they there? Who called them there? Things wrap up with a deus ex machina ending to defeat an antagonist. And that teen vampire army? To be battled some day in a non-existent sequel!
There are the germs of some good ideas here, but this is a badly cobbled together mess that needed several revisions and rewrites before getting published. It was really ruff to get through. (I'll show myself out.)
December 4, 2025
2.5 stars rounded up to three mainly because I like books about dogs.
This was another bad B movie plot that was a mix of campy vampires and pure creepy vampires with more body horror. The dog despite the title is not really a "bad" dog.
Created in a lab by a female professor, she intends for the dog to get rid of the meatier waste being dumped in the lake by a slaughterhouse magnate named Richard Haimatikos. It is just one of many failed experiments and other experiments where the dogs eat recyclable items like newspaper, metal or even plastic.
Experiment A has now reached to Experiment Y which has escaped. Not a vicious bulldog or Rottweiler but...a Bassett hound. Sad-eyed, long-eared, black-footed Hush Puppy cuteness.
Having no teeth, the fleas of the dog create an enzyme in their saliva that liquifies meat into a goo of plasma that the dog can slurp up with its hairy tongue. We get great detail into just how gross the process is when two live teenagers are bitten by the fleas.
One of them ends up being the scientist's son, Kenny, who is lab partners with good old Dan Pritcher. A New Years' Party at his house is shattered into chaos when he almost believes that his little sister Josephine was hit and killed by a drunk driver. The woman didn't kill Josie but did kill her friend Penny whom she was sledding with, and we get detail of the poor child being dragged and leaving fingers in the woman's bumper.
The dog gets to the body before the police arrive but again...created that way to have an insatiable appetite. Even then anyone knows that eating too much isn't good for anybody's tummy.
Though to be used for good, Richard Haimatikos intends to use the dog for another use. To rid himself of the bodies of his victims since he is a vampire. He is ready to create a vampire army about town out of unsuspecting teens with Dan and Katrina main targets for "conversion".
Being horror movie fans or at least knowing about vampiric folklore in Dan's case, our main foursome along with Josephine have been stocking up on garlic bulbs, garlic powder and even the garlic tablets which are less odorous but still potent in the blood stream.
Wouldn't you know it but once Katrina sees the dog about town, she thinks it is the cutest thing!
Aaron's parents have recently gotten back together and are going to have a baby so Aaron can't keep the dog at his home with his mom pregnant so Katrina hopes that her mother may give in, but they soon get roped into Richard's scheme. Most of it in trying to protect the dog which they decide to name Fang since it has no teeth.
Despite this whacked out plot, Bad Dog has an ending I have come to expect of most YA Horror from the early 1990s. A weird twist yet it could end on a freeze frame with a sitcom audience's canned laughter despite a bunch of people dying.
Talk about a howler of an ending...
This was another bad B movie plot that was a mix of campy vampires and pure creepy vampires with more body horror. The dog despite the title is not really a "bad" dog.
Created in a lab by a female professor, she intends for the dog to get rid of the meatier waste being dumped in the lake by a slaughterhouse magnate named Richard Haimatikos. It is just one of many failed experiments and other experiments where the dogs eat recyclable items like newspaper, metal or even plastic.
Experiment A has now reached to Experiment Y which has escaped. Not a vicious bulldog or Rottweiler but...a Bassett hound. Sad-eyed, long-eared, black-footed Hush Puppy cuteness.
Having no teeth, the fleas of the dog create an enzyme in their saliva that liquifies meat into a goo of plasma that the dog can slurp up with its hairy tongue. We get great detail into just how gross the process is when two live teenagers are bitten by the fleas.
One of them ends up being the scientist's son, Kenny, who is lab partners with good old Dan Pritcher. A New Years' Party at his house is shattered into chaos when he almost believes that his little sister Josephine was hit and killed by a drunk driver. The woman didn't kill Josie but did kill her friend Penny whom she was sledding with, and we get detail of the poor child being dragged and leaving fingers in the woman's bumper.
The dog gets to the body before the police arrive but again...created that way to have an insatiable appetite. Even then anyone knows that eating too much isn't good for anybody's tummy.
Though to be used for good, Richard Haimatikos intends to use the dog for another use. To rid himself of the bodies of his victims since he is a vampire. He is ready to create a vampire army about town out of unsuspecting teens with Dan and Katrina main targets for "conversion".
Being horror movie fans or at least knowing about vampiric folklore in Dan's case, our main foursome along with Josephine have been stocking up on garlic bulbs, garlic powder and even the garlic tablets which are less odorous but still potent in the blood stream.
Wouldn't you know it but once Katrina sees the dog about town, she thinks it is the cutest thing!
Aaron's parents have recently gotten back together and are going to have a baby so Aaron can't keep the dog at his home with his mom pregnant so Katrina hopes that her mother may give in, but they soon get roped into Richard's scheme. Most of it in trying to protect the dog which they decide to name Fang since it has no teeth.
Despite this whacked out plot, Bad Dog has an ending I have come to expect of most YA Horror from the early 1990s. A weird twist yet it could end on a freeze frame with a sitcom audience's canned laughter despite a bunch of people dying.
Talk about a howler of an ending...
April 5, 2024
Was this book good? No. Was it bat shit crazy? Kinda. While we continue with the same four characters from the previous book it just becomes ridiculously weird. This book is about vampires but also about genetically engineered dogs that can either only eat meat or plant products. It’s so weird and strange. But the meat eating dog doesn’t like garlic and since there are now vampires the main characters are safe because they consume copious amounts of garlic. Now the way the dog eats is nice and gory. It has fleas that turn the meat into goo and it slurps that up. The few scenes that describe that are great. But alas we know the four main characters are in no real danger and I’m so tired of the book ending with no real resolution.
January 17, 2021
This is a love note to all my dear fans who have stood by me since 1994-1995 when we first saw the release of Bantam Doubleday Dell's publication of my 4 pre-internet thrillers, NIGHTMARE MATINEE, DRIVEN TO KILL!, BAD DOG: A VAMPIRE'S CANINE, and PARTY TILL YOU SCREAM! My heavens, how things have changed now in 2021! But, I have excellent news for you! My 4 bone-chilling yarns have been re-edited for a 21st Century attention span and re-released as "vintage pre-cell phone when you couldn't text, 'MOM, COME GET ME!' ". Now my 4 original teen thrillers are published under the title THE G.G. GARTH TETRALOGY -- meaning a collection of 4 (JumpMaster Press, December 2020). For those of you, like my wedding photographer's lovely bride, who still have collector copies of the original publication of 25,000 of each title, now's an opportunity for you to salvage or re-sell them at prices staggeringly higher than back in the 20th Century, since they're few and far between and out of print. However, if you would like a full set of newly-minted 4-in-1 binding, I do hope you'll visit JumpMaster Press' website directly. And enjoy, too, my 5th millennial work of fiction, DRAGON SLAYER OF THE PINK SAND DEAD SEA DESERT (JumpMaster Press, January 2021) -- click for the full set of 5 G.G. Garth books https://www.jumpmasterpress.com/produ...
...and THANK YOU!
Be well,
G.G. Garth
...and THANK YOU!
Be well,
G.G. Garth
March 14, 2013
I'm being generous with two stars for this lemon. I got it because it's about a basset hound and a vampire, which sounds like a joke--a basset hound and a vampire walk into a bar . . . The basset hound is genetically engineered to work with fleas to dispose of the garbage in the city. Instead the hound is stolen by a vampire who lets him lose on the town. I'm not sure why the vampire was in the story. His character was annoying, and none of thee characters were very well developed. Though the basset had a story line, there was nothing to him. He stood around and wagged his tail. Overall this seemed more of an interesting premise but not a well thought out story. I wonder if the author is embarassed over this book today?
August 10, 2015
Bit of a preposterous plot, but probably more appealing and entertaining to it's target demographic. It has that caliber of gore most teenaged horror faire seems to have.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews