A Hungarian band plays American rock & roll and blues hits with great enthusiasm and passion, but success seems to avoid them. TV and radio don't play their songs, sometimes even their crowd just sits and sips beer. Something must be done, and the band's leader (Lóránt Schuster) comes up with the big idea: write and play songs for the people about themselves and not about some exotic, but too distant people's life. "We move from Tobacco Road to Retek street." With the remains of the band and a second singer (Gyula Deák "Bill") they find what they failed to show people before. The rich new sound can finally translate the spirit of blues and rock much more than words from any dictionaries could, this is the Kőbánya blues.
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Bald Dog is a mockumentary-style presentation of the artistic crisis of a Hungarian band, which attempts to update its sound to the modern times so that they might get more fans and be on the radio and on TV. The movie begins with the band playing "Johnny B. Goode" in an almost empty small-town bar. The tires of their bus get slashed, their landlords chase them away - a really hard time for the band which almost causes it to break up. They decide to continue and to do that they understand they have to change their music and image. However, what they do to achieve this seems illogical - they get a crippled overweight vocalist missing a leg and with a crutch, and play dirty and obscene American-style blues rock, and save an ugly dog from the dog crematorium to become their mascot. Talking about obscenity, Bald Dog has quite a bit of it - language, nudity - one really wonders how this movie could be made in a communist country. Apparently, it was not impossible! The band remains true to their roots and at the end of the movie we see them at their peak - playing at an open-air festival in the forest with many long-haired fans headbangin' to their filthy music. The movie itself feels a bit stylized but not overly so and as a whole comes as quite authentic. It is beautifully made, with a very decadent atmosphere of urban and mental decay. There are certain images that leave the viewer wandering - what is the woman doing with the machine in the beginning of the movie? Why was the front of that car buried under a heap of rubble? Sometimes the movie becomes black-and-white - I am not sure exactly why but it seems to me when the band-mates’ "blues", their emotional turmoil, is the strongest. That is when we are also showed decadent citations by famous rock and jazz musicians (Mick Jagger, Miles Davis, Muddy Waters, etc.) At one point we are also shown concert footage of the famous Hungarian band Omega playing their awesome song "Girl with Pearls in Her Hair". Even though my personal opinion might be a little biased, because I like blues rock a lot, I think Bald Dog is a great movie with a lot of artistic merit and that may be enjoyed by anyone.
