Cujo (1983 film)

Nope.  Nothing wrong here. - Advertising mascot the Professor

So, it's storytime here at Happy Horror again, folks!  See, when I was little, my mom and her friend would take turns watching me while they went to the movies... Mom would go in the daytime and her friend would watch me, then her friend would go at night while I stayed home with Mom.  Well, when this movie came out, my moms friend was driving an old Pinto.  The night she saw the movie, she was driving home and happened to see a huge St. Bernard walking down the street.  She was just hoping she wouldn't have car trouble!

Cujo is something of a milestone for me.  It was, to the best of my knowledge, the first "siege" type movie I'd ever seen, also possibly the first killer animal film.  The story is pretty basic.  Woman and her son take a car out to a mechanic's, only to find the place deserted, except for a very sick, very rabid St. Bernard.  Everything she does from that point is to try to calm her little boy, and to survive the killer animal outside the door.

The film is very effective.  The dogs they have are well-trained, and look the part of the sick pet.  The cast does pretty well, also.  Dee Wallace plays mother Donna Trenton.  She did very well here, possibly the best of any King film actress.  She's also in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Howling and Critters.  Ed Lauter played mechanic Joe Camber here.  He's also been in The Number 23, Night of Terror and 1976's King Kong remake.  Kaiulani Lee played his wife, Charity.  She didn't have a really long part, but she did well with it.  She was also in 1981's The Fan, an episode of Tales from the Darkside ("Deliver Us from Goodness") and Hush.  Billy Jacoby played Brett Camber, Joe and Charity's son and Cujo's owner.  He had a really intense scene with Cujo in the fog early on in the film.  He was also in The Beastmaster, Bloody Birthday and The 'Burbs.

Now, we come at a bit of an impasse here.  In my It's Alive review, I mentioned that I couldn't give a movie a perfect score that hurt a cat in it.  Well, here we have a dog that gets hurt repeatedly.  However, I do find a difference between killing an animal off needlessly (as in It's Alive, Man's Best Friend, Drag Me to Hell, etc.) and having the animal be a killing machine.  Without the killer dog here, we wouldn't have a movie.  For example, I saw a movie years ago that had the plotline of feral/possessed cats attacking people.  If I were to review that film today, I wouldn't dock points from it, even with cats getting hurt in it, because that's the driving force behind the plot.  In short: sick/possessed/wild animal attacking people as part of the plot: a-okay with me.  Animal getting killed or hurt just to draw sympathy from the audience, or show just how mean the villain/monster is: not good in my book at all.

With that out of the way, I give the film a 5 out of 5.  Stephen King has gone on record stating that it's one of his favorite film adaptations, and who am I to disagree there?  So, on to the next!  Tomorrow, we're going to have a true classic, and contender for best horror film of all time.  What film is it?  You'll have to wait to find out!  Until next time, take care, and this is Red Hawk signing out!