Subject: Retrospective: A Boy and his Dog (1975)

From: John Smyth <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 May 1999 05:10:19 GMT

A BOY AND HIS DOG (1975)
Rating = **** out of ******
http://www.reviewfilm.com

The year is 2024 and Earth has been rendered desolate by a nuclear
war. Vic (Don Johnson) is a teenager who is trying to survive by
foraging amongst the wastelands of post-apocalyptic USA. Life is
dangerous since many of the other foragers are deranged lunatics
with a penchant for killing anything that moves. Vic has only one
friend - his dog, Blood, who can communicate with Vic via telepathy.
Blood has plenty of guile and worldly wisdom, and Vic relies on him
to keep them both alive in such a dangerous environment.

Vic's primary concern is to find food and water, but being a young
man of a certain age, he is also looking for women. Alas, finding a
woman is no easy task since groups of marauding 'rippers' rape and
kill any woman they find. However, in the basement of a building,
he spies on a woman, Quilla June (Susanne Benton) and is fascinated
by her body as she dresses, unaware of Vic's presence. After some
initial protests, she has sex with him, and tells him of an
underground community which is much safer than the surface. Leaving
Blood behind (against the dog's better judgement), he follows her
and discovers a puritanical community led by Lou Craddock (Jason
Robards).

On the face of it, a post-apocalyptic world and a talking dog may seem like 
a bizarre scenario but A boy and his Dog is quite an enjoyable sci-fi tale 
(and has become something of a cult classic). Blood's voice is done as a 
narration, the cheapest way of conveying telepathic messages and Tim 
McIntire gravely voice (as Blood) strikes just the right notes of irony and 
wisdom. Don Johnson, the pastel coloured cop who would elevate the act of 
staring into space to an art form in Miami Vice, is quite good as the 
enthusiastic but naive, teenager. The film takes a firm swipe at American 
society, particularly when the action moves underground. Vic is initially 
delighted when he finds that, due to a lack of fertile men, he must 
'service' all the women in the community. He is not so happy when he finds 
out the consequence of his eager acceptance of that task. Craddock's society 
is a sick parody of what had existed before the nuclear war, and not much 
better or liberated than the misery on the surface. The analogy of the 
suppressed underground society, and the suppressed emotions and undercurrent 
of 1970's society is hammered home, but the film works just as well as a 
straightforward sci-fi tale.

This was L.Q. Jones last directorial effort as a moviemaker - he had
previously made a low-budget horror movie called The Devil's Bedroom
(1964). However, he has had a long and varied career as an actor (he
appeared in The Mask of Zorro last year), mainly in Westerns both in
film and TV. He appeared with Elvis in his one serious movie (The
Flaming Star,1960), with Clint Eastwood in Hang Em High (1967), before
hooking up with Sam Peckinpah, which led to roles in Ride the High
Country (1960), Major Dundee (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Ballad of 
Cable Hogue (1970) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). One could 
possibly regard A Boy and his Dog (which was also entitled, somewhat 
luridly, as Psycho Boy and his Killer Dog) as a subversion of the typical 
western, just as Peckinpah's later work (particularly The Wild Bunch and Pat 
Garrett...) would transform the concept of the noble hero into an amoral 
anti-hero. Tim McIntire provided the voice of Blood and also composed the 
music for the film (he would commit suicide in 1986).

The movie is based on a story by Harlan Ellison, who has a long history in 
science fiction on TV and movies. Currently a script consultant for Babylon 
5, he has written for The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Star Trek, and 
has a story credit for The Terminator, which was added just before that 
movie's release. (Legend has it that when Ellison had protested that the 
Terminator storyline was very similar to a story he had written for TV, 
Cameron's lawyers were going to contest his claim. They swiftly changed 
their minds when they found out that Cameron had boasted to the film crew 
that he had cobbled the Terminator story together from a couple of Outer 
Limits episodes).

Despite the low budget, the film is nevertheless entertaining, thanks
to Jones' assured direction, the black humour of the script and the
performances of the eponymous heroes. And the best scene is the very
last one.

Directed by L.Q. Jones

(c) Review of Film, Stockholm Film Review

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