"This is a thriller, and it's also a complete metaphor," said Samuel Fuller of this controversial feature that almost didn't get made at all, and never was released theatrically in the U.S. Loosely based on a story by Romain Gary, White Dog concerns the training of animals to find and attack people on a racial basis-in this case, the dog is trained to attack blacks. Paul Winfield portrays an animal trainer who takes on the task of deprogramming the animal on behalf of its new owner. With frequent point-of-view shots from the dog's perspective, Fuller makes a case for his thesis, which is that infecting an animal with "a disease created by man" is itself a form of abuse. In a Variety interview entitled "The White Dog Talks," Fuller said, "In Frankenstein, the monster's crimes were great, but the greater crime was Dr. Frankenstein's for having created the monster." If the mere idea of a "white dog" is itself dehumanizing, accusations of racism toward Fuller derived in part from misunderstandings of the film's content, not to mention its intent. In Gary's story, the dog is retrained to attack whites, compounding, as Fuller points out, that story's anti-black sentiments. Fuller's version has Winfield, in a fine performance, attempting to cure the dog, not retrain him. A score by Ennio Morricone and "soulful" animal performances (thanks to creative cinematography and editing à la Franju) lift White Dog far above its pop-pulp niche.