Movie Description

The Plague Dogs is a 1982 British-American adult animated adventure film based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Richard Adams. The film was written, directed and produced by Martin Rosen, who also directed Watership Down, the film adaptation of another novel by Adams. The Plague Dogs was produced by Nepenthe Productions; it was released by Embassy Pictures in the United States and by United Artists in the United Kingdom. The film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA for heavy animal cruelty themes, violent imagery, and emotionally distressing scenes. The Plague Dogs is the first non-family oriented MGM animated film.

The film's story is centered on two dogs named Rowf and Snitter, who escape from a research laboratory in Great Britain. In the process of telling the story, the film highlights the cruelty of performing vivisection and animal research for its own sake (though Rosen said that this was not an anti-vivisection film, but an adventure), an idea that had only recently come to public attention during the 1960s-70s.