A German Shepherd and his Dachshund friend break out of the pound and return to the life of gambling that they had left behind. A Bulldog is now running the casino and has a human girl hidden in the back room who talks to rats and determines winners in their races. The escaped convicts rescue the girl and proceed to exploit her animal communication skills in exactly the same manner as the Bulldog.
Bad music! Don Bluth directed The Secret of NIMH, which was not a musical and was much better. I think the songs only hurt this film. He also directed Pete's Dragon with good music. Ralph Burns did the music for ADGTH and Irwin Kostal did the music for PD, so that explains the difference. Much of the music problem was in audio mixing, with the vocals too loud and instruments too quiet. On an interesting note, the girl star of this film, Judith Barsi, was abused and eventually murdered by her father before he shot himself. Wikipedia reports that she had begun plucking her eyelashes and her cat's whiskers because of the trauma. I thought the plot of this film reminded me of a combination of Oliver Twist and Paper Moon. The innocent child is thrown into a life of crime and her "guardian" is not qualified to take care of her. I think I saw this in the theater when it was originally released. I rate it o.k., but it would have gotten a much better rating without the songs.
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