A Boy and His Dog (1975)
The year is 2024... a future you'll probably live to see.
Year of Release: 1975
Genre: Science Fiction/Drama
Rated: R
Running Time: 95 minutes (1:35)
Director: L.Q. Jones
Cast:
Don Johnson ... Vic
Tim McIntire ... Blood (voice)
Susanne Benton ... Quilla June Holmes
Jason Robards ... Lou Craddock
Alvy Moore ... Dr. Moore
Helene Winston ... Mez Smith
L.Q. Jones ... Actor in Porno Film (uncredited)
Summary:
This classic sci-fi tale follows the exploits of a young man and his telepathic dog as they struggle in a post-atomic wilderness. World War Four has ravaged Earth, and its survivors must battle for food, shelter, and companionship in the desert-like wasteland. As Vic and his dog Blood eke out a meager existence foraging for food and fighting gangs of cutthroats, a beautiful young woman lures Vic into a bizarre underground city, where he is to be used against his will to impregnate dozens of young ladies.
Review:
A Boy and His Dog, remindin' us that man's best friend is gender specific for a reason.
And speakin' of animals that could use a flea dip, I wanna start by sayin' that I appreciate anyone who puts in the effort to bring a little culture to this wasteland, but all the same, I'm here to tell ya that what happened last night at the First Annual Walleye's Topless Dancin' & Bait Shop Ladies Mud Wrestling Championship Tournament gave the sport a black eye from which it may never recover.
To start with, I have reason to believe that Wade Sawyer, if that is his real name, deliberately watered down the prospective contenders by offerin' the winner a $100 gift certificate to Saul 'n Blaine's Bridal Boutique and Marriage Annulment Center. Now, I ask you - does that sound like a prize that's gonna bring in the kinda gals willin' to bite, scratch, and smother their way to victory? Seriously, if you wanna entice a woman with a fightin' spirit you gotta give 'em somethin' they want - like free bowlin' league membership dues, or 50% off concession stand chow at the Grime Time. Tell ya what I think - I figure he wussed out to protect his investment, 'cause ya know damn well he wouldn't risk his dancers gettin' their pretty faces caved in by the Wild Women of Wongo.
Matter of fact, when I mentioned sign-ups for Wade's planned extravaganza were open last week Sadie Bonebreak, Roxanne Bigelow, Bambi Mastrude, and Trixie Willager all flatly refused to take part for such a pitiful purse, and even more disgustin', the latter two offered to meet me for an inter-gender match at a time and place of my choosing. It's stuff like this that makes ya ashamed to be an American.
So basically, Wade went over the applications to assess everyone's... um... qualifications... and ended up choosing Regina Buchinski, Brigitte Koski, Meg Sitchin, and crowd favorite Fannie Ogglesby, who, after bein' tipped off about a potential police presence at The Gutter Bowl on New Year's Eve, decided to show off her talents someplace they'd be appreciated.
I tried to put a stop to this. Billy Hilliard and I gathered over 50 signatures from the inmates at the Soggy Valley Women's Correctional Institution who unanimously decried this farce and volunteered their services in a bid to bring some credibility to the event. Wade wouldn't even look at the petition.
I suggested he end the conscription of his bra schuckers in hopes of quelling his concern over the potential loss of his meal tickets. He insisted the probable droppage of their drawers was the draw.
I called 'im a dildo. He took a swing at me.
Now, a lotta folks wouldna even showed up to watch as a matter of principle, but I put my integrity aside to show support for the concept 'cause it's important to remember that all breasts have the right to stand up and be counted even when they're attached to mediocre torsos that have no business gettin' involved in legitimate athletic competition.
Unfortunately, as predicted, mosta the matches involved giggly, bi-curious 40-somethins with unsatisfyin' sex lives grabbin' their opponents' goodies and pretendin' it was an accident until they'd inevitably slip and allow themselves to be pinned just to get a cheap thrill, with one notable exception that I'll get to in a minute.
The first match was between Mandi Tuggles and Meg Sitchin, the latter of whose very existence confounded me given that in a town of 2700 it ain't often you encounter someone you can't at least identify as the cousin of the guy who does lube jobs at Fred's Retreads even if you don't know their name. This Meg person squashed Mandi in around 26 seconds after grabbin' 'er by the thong, liftin' 'er off the ground, and buryin' 'er shoulder into poor Mandi's chest as she drove 'er into the mud. I thought for sure a coupla Mandi's ribs'd broken on impact but fortunately it just turned out to be one of 'er breast implants poppin' and Tetnis got 'er stitched 'er up and back on a pole inside ten minutes.
Fannie also scored a first-round pinfall after droppin' 'er namesake directly onto the face of a very surprised and unhappy Tawny Sissel after Tawny went low and whiffed a takedown. I'm tentatively callin' this maneuver the Crack Down.
Regina fell to Lexxi followin' a body slam that resulted in a partial orgasm durin' the scoop, and Chastity Dollarhide made Brigitte tap out to an Indian deathlock that woulda constituted an illegal public sex act in 22 states due to the location of Chastity's heel.
The semi-finals were a lot more interestin', with Meg eventually managing to use Fannie's low center of gravity against 'er by yellin' "Hey! You can't bring that camera in here!" and spearin' Fannie into the mud after she turned around to check her hair in the mirror.
Still, the best fight of the night hadda be the grudge match between Lexxi and Chastity that'd been brewin' ever since the former accused the latter of usin' motorized whirly-gig nipple tassels - insinuatin' that Chastity lacked the mammual dexterity to make 'em spin without the aid of artificial manipulation. This accusation is completely false, just to be clear, 'cause I ended up takin' a pair of Chastity's props home one night after the adhesive crapped out in the middle of 'er routine, and I can personally attest that said tassels had not been modified in any way.
Like I was sayin' though, these two were very evenly matched, and I don't just mean in the sense that when either one would put the other in a headlock said head completely vanished from sight. Within two minutes they'd torn every scrap of clothin' offa each other and the mud'd become laced with shards of jagged, busted fingernails just waitin' to burrow their way into tender flesh, which was eventually what brought Chastity down when one of 'em sunk half an inch into the arch of 'er left foot.
Lexxi seized the opportunity and pounced - trappin' Chastity's left arm and cinchin' in the dreaded cameltoe clutch... which's really just grabbin' a handfulla public hair and wrenchin' on it for those of you unversed in the finer points of the sport.
Chastity shrieked like... well, like a cutthroat bitch was yankin' 'er pubic hair, but she wouldn't give up. Finally, when it seemed like her nerve endings were frayed to the breaking point, she got ahold of Lexxi's bangs, jerked 'er over 'er shoulder, clamped on a full nelson, wrapped 'er legs around Lexxi's torso, positioned 'er toes to both sides of Lexxi's barbell nipple rings, and began slowly straightening her legs. Lexxi had no choice but to surrender, and by the time Tetnis was able to pull Chastity off Lexxi's nipples looked like a coupla half-eaten Slim Jims. Let that be a lesson to ya - if you're gonna come for the queen, you'd best not tug on 'er rug.
Gettin' back to my original point though, this's where things went sideways for me personally, 'cause durin' the intermission separatin' the semis from the final bout, Wade decided to replenish the mud supply. This in itself wouldna been a problem except that he's got this new kid workin' for 'im who didn't realize where the stuff Wade'd bought special from Dirty Larry's Topsoil and Gravel Emporium was bein' stored, and so he accidentally dumped the contents of one of Wade's worm beds into the ring.
Meanwhile, I'd been keepin' an eye on this Meg Sitchin lady for the better part of the night tryna place 'er until finally when she and Chastity stepped into the ring it hit me - it was Duke Tankersley's little sister, Randine. Suddenly it all made sense - Wade woulda never let a scrappy chick like her get involved in this sham exhibition he'd booked, but with 'er whole body shaved, a clever alias, and a simpering put-on persona, she'da easily breezed through the audition on the strength of anatomy.
Chastity had no idea what was comin' and after the slobber-knocker she'd just had with Lexxi she didn't stand a chance, but if that'd been the end of it I probably could've accepted the results given that at least one bonafide toughgal made it into the finals. There was just one problem - soon as Chastity stepped into the mud and felt the worms crawlin' under 'er feet she totally lost 'er composure and it was all she could do to keep from meltin' down right there in front of her inebriated cheerin' section.
Randine, on the other hand, havin' grown up in a house with no electricity, indoor plumbing, or cable TV, took zero issue in sharin' a space with creepy crawlies, and the instant the bell rang she reached down, grabbed a handfulla nightcrawlers, and stuffed 'em into Chastity's bikini top.
Billy Hilliard, Cleave Furguson, and a few other guys finally caught up with Chastity tryna force 'er way into the car wash at the Gas, Grass, or Cash 24-Hour Fuel, Lawn Care, and ATM Station about twenty minutes later and got 'er bundled up before 'er buns froze, but by that time Randine'd won via countout and claimed the title without ever throwin' a punch. I got nothin' against Randine, and honestly, that was damned resourceful thinkin', but if Wade hadn't barred entry to all the women with scars from cigarette burns on their bodies you can bet *they* wouldna turned tail and ran from a little bait.
With the exception of Chastity vs. Lexxi the whole thing was a crock as far as I'm concerned, and I won't be satisfied until Randine faces some serious challengers for the championship - preferably against someone with prison tattoos or a whip locker in their bedroom.
Anyhow, once the main event was in the books and I'd finished complainin' to anyone who'd listen I decided to ring in the new year with L.Q. Jones's apocalyptic vision of the year 2024, and although the accuracy of his predictions are mixed (the state of women's status within society seems about right, but he was way off the mark where it concerns scientific advances in the field of super-intelligent canine technology) the entertainment value is still holdin' strong. 'Course one of the seldom mentioned perks of the flick is the inclusion of a dog in a dramatic supporting role, and Blood's presence throughout the film held Apollo's attention well enough to keep 'im distracted from all the chunkheads firin' off the unexploded ordnance they've been holdin' onto in the event liberals try stormin' the Chickawalka VFW.
You prolly got better things to do than read about ordnance-related ordinance violations though, so lemme just get ya up to speed on what to expect for the upcomin' year with a few atomically popped kernels of wisdom guaranteed to prepare you for what lies ahead.
First, havin' sex with the dog in the room is twice as awkward when he's got an IQ of 177. Second, the open-air porno theater, while biologically hazardous, provides keen insight into the virility of local movie-goers. And third, when the fertility specialist comes from a land down under - you'd better run, and you'd better take cover.
The movie begins in the year 2024 where the freaks have inherited the Earth following a foreign policy snafu and things're so bad that the women hafta live in subterranean bunkers and hide their hair under beanies 'cause all the men've become graduates of the Harvey Weinstein Romance Academy. This includes Don Johnson, who communicates telepathically with his grammar Nazi canine companion (Blood) who dreams of a day when they can pull up stakes and find a better life somewhere with a water supply that doesn't require pullin' a page outta the Amazon delivery driver's handbook, only Don refuses to take Blood for the long walkies until he uses his Rover Radar to find 'im a woman who likes long walks through the fallout, tire-lit dinners, and spontaneous displays of affection. This ain't Blood's first ho-deo, so he makes Don buy 'im dinner before he'll agree to find 'im a place to bury his bone. Then the two of 'em go roamin' around the desert like Israelites until they come across a caravan diggin' up cans of corned beef hash out of a foxhole and Don purt'near gets his post-apocalyptic posterior blown off stealin' a sack fulla vegetarian chili and expired olives.
Things're lookin' up though, 'cause now they have enough scratch to go check out a stag loop at the White Sands Drive-In where Blood's bridey-sense starts tinglin' and they end up descendin' into the catacombs of an abandoned lizard cannery, only when they find the gal (Quilla) Don takes his eyes off the prize for too long and she ends up humanizin' 'erself and things really start goin' sideways when a platoon of poon goons with rug-sniffing dogs find 'em. Don, Quilla, and Blood fight for their right to party, but they're badly outnumbered and so Don hasta make noises like Tor Johnson havin' night terrors until the desperados get squirrely and give each other the circular firing squad treatment. Unfortunately, Don's imitation was a little too spot on, and pretty quick the real Beast from Yucca Flats shows up lookin' for love and everyone hasta go hide out in a Half-life house where Don and Quilla start makin' the sign of the hydroponic squash goblin even though Don finds this new consent concept a tad kinky. Then Quilla starts pickin' out floral patterns for their wedding and Blood hasta have a bros-before-hos heart-to-heart with Don before he ends up standin' outside a changing room with a purse under one arm wonderin' what happened. Quilla is P.O.'d, so she clubs Don's skull with a Maglite and heads back to The Underground and by this point Blood's too beaten up from the run-in with the teat-o-banditos to stop Don from goin' after 'er and so he gets left behind while Don heads down into a hydroelectric plant where he's captured and forcibly bathed by a buncha weirdos who paint their faces like they worship at the altar of Marcel Marceau.
Then they dress him up like he's bein' forced to do a guest shot on Hee Haw and tell 'im he's been selected to reseed the fields 'cause all the guys down there've gone impotent from lookin' at women who take makeup tips from Bozo the Clown for the last 15 years and Don loves this idea until he finds out that the initiative will be overseen by Painstakingly Planned Parenthood who intend to rob his sperm bank and pass his lineage on via test tube. Thankfully, they park 'im just inside this cattle chute of a wedding chapel where the day's crop of brides get herded in for insemination, at which point Quillo jumps the line and bludgeons the minister with 'er bouquet before Don can run outta baby formula and be proactively executed for suspicion of future deadbeat daddery. Turns out Quilla's some kinda progressive bomb-thrower and needs Don to help 'er waste the Learned Council of Crotchety Old Farts to wrest control and pass sweeping legislation that would legalize fun. Don doesn't want any part of it until he watches this hillbilly cyborg squeeze the heads of Quilla's friends till their brains get mooshed outta their noses like Play-Doh Fun Factories for havin' the incorrect attitude and decides some things're worth fightin' for, and that Quilla's got most of 'em packed into all the right places. I'm gonna go ahead and stop right here 'cause we're comin' up on one of the grimmest, funniest endings in film history and I don't wanna give it away except to say that Blood is thicker than twater.
Alrighty, well, this's where a lotta people would go into painstaking detail explainin' how the flick is a parable examining humanity's struggle to find balance between anarchy and tyranny, but I think most of us are just here to see the adventures of Detective James Crockett and his cynical, galaxy-brained pooch as they scour the desert for nookie and leftover cans of Bush's Baked Beans. In all seriousness though, as big bomb flicks go, this one stands out from the rest with its uniquely upbeat, blackly comedic tone in an era where these kinds of flicks were always playing on the grim possibilities of what could happen if somebody in D.C. or the Kremlin suddenly developed an itchy trigger finger. A Boy and His Dog came out a coupla years after classics like The Omega Man, Soylent Green, No Blade of Grass, and the Planet of the Apes series, and some joker apparently got their hands on a copy of Harlan Ellison's novel, liked it, and decided that Hollywood needed to lighten up a little.
One of the things that sets it apart from its predecessors is the fact that all three of the principal characters are distinctly unlikable despite the loyalty Vic and Blood share for one another when they're not berating or threatening to ditch each other. You can't help but feel some sympathy for Blood in the sense that he's doing what he feels is necessary to keep the chunkheaded Vic from gettin' his ass blown off by desert marauders, but even though the film never goes so far as to show Vic carrying on with a conquest, Blood is still instrumental in locating said conquests. Quilla *appears* to be on the level until you find out she's willing to sacrifice Vic and anyone else she has to to overthrow the folksy Nazis living beneath the planet's surface, and Vic is just your garden-variety teenager growing up in a cruel world without anything resembling a moral compass; so basically, every time these characters receive something resembling comeuppance, we tend to enjoy it for the same reason we like seeing the teenagers in Friday the 13th movies get shish-kabobed - namely, because they're all jerks. You *want* to like them, and you're even given feint glimmers of hope when Vic vows to come back for Blood after he avenges himself against Quilla, or when you hear the story about Blood risking his life to save Vic from radioactive sludge monsters, or upon witnessing the stifling conditions under which the subterraneans live and learning that Quilla is trying to wrest control away from the tyrants, but despite being morbidly satisfied by the twisted ending, you still never come to identify with any of these characters. I'd imagine there's a sizeable portion of the population that hates it because it breaks the rules and refuses to conform to the audience's expectations about how its characters should behave, but even though I wouldn't put it in the same league as the Chuck Heston post-apocalypse flicks, I find it to be a real breath of fresh air given its refusal to follow the standard formula of the subgenre.
Your mileage may vary given your ability or refusal to accept such shenanigans, but since these guys went through the trouble of makin' the movie let's set that aside for now and see how this thing's held up half a century after its expiration date.
The plot, because of its unwillingness to tell a conventional story that builds to a climax in which good triumphs over evil, was unique for its time, and remains entertaining with its low-stakes, semi-aimless narrative. It's not as scattershot as something like Yor, the Hunter from the Future, but the story takes such a bizarre turn around the 52-minute mark that it almost feels as though the screenwriter has lost control of his creation even though the script is pretty faithful to Ellison's novel. That would be jarring enough on its own, but the light-hearted tone pervading the film adds an additional layer of bemusement while presiding over some fairly touchy subjects, and what we're left with is a sci-fi black comedy that completely turns the notion of what a dystopian film is supposed to be on its head. The director/writer, L.Q. Jones, doesn't expend a lotta time building a narrative or establishing character depth, and ordinarily that's the kinda thing that leads to your film bein' best remembered as a Mystery Science Theater experiment, but I feel that the hopelessness of the setting and general chaos of living in a world without order kinda excuses the unfocused nature of the movie and reinforces the idea that we're not in Kansas anymore. I mean, except for the people livin' underground in a simulation of 19th-Century Topeka. It should also be mentioned that the twist ending, which I won't go into, is laid out so flawlessly that it hits you and Don Johnson at the exact moment and works to absolute perfection.
The acting is exceptional and features a cast whose notable mainstream credits is lengthier than their list of genre titles - a rarity for flicks I'm inclined to review. Don Johnson flawlessly straddles the line between likable and loathsome - teetering back and forth and shifting your perception of the character as the movie plays out, consistently crushing hope of a redemption arc while also allowing through just enough humanity to prevent the character from becoming completely reprehensible. The same holds for Tim McIntire's abrasive, condescending portrayal of Blood as he spends most of the film running Johnson down as a means of keeping the boy under his paw to prevent him from getting his impetuous ass killed because, as we do briefly see in the film's few touching scenes, he does care for the boy despite how fed-up of his bullshit he's become. Not to be outdone, Susanne Benton shifts effortlessly between syrupy-sweet farce and ruthless manipulator seeking to burn her oppressive society to the ground with the goal of rebuilding it in her own image, and although the supporting cast is loaded with talented character actors and notable TV figures who play their roles admirably, it's essentially a cast of three, and each does an excellent job of illustrating the callous, clinical nature of the world they inhabit.
Here's who matters and why (besides Don): Susanne Benton (The Last Horror Film), Jason Robards (Black Rainbow, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Murders in the Rue Morgue 1971, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1967), Alvy Moore (The Horror Show, Intruder, Mortuary 1982, Scream 1981, The Brotherhood of Satan, The Witchmaker, The War of the Worlds 1953), Helene Winston (What's the Matter with Helen?, The Killing Kind, The Brotherhood of Satan, The Witchmaker), Charles McGraw (The Birds, The Night Stalker, The Devil and Miss Sarah, The Mad Ghoul, The Undying Monster), Dickie Jones (Life Returns), L.Q. Jones (The Beast Within, Timerider, The Strange and Deadly Occurrence, The Brotherhood of Satan, The Witchmaker).
And the arteests: Jason Robards (Manuel "Cheyenne" Gutierrez in Once Upon a Time in the West, Frank Buckman in Parenthood, Earl Partridge in Magnolia, Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men, the voice of Ulysses S. Grant in The Civil War, Joe's Father in Johnny Got His Gun, General Walter C. Short in Tora! Tora! Tora!, Cable Hogue in The Ballad of Cable Hogue), Tim McIntire (Huey Rouch in Brubaker, Alan Freed in American Hot Wax), Alvy Moore (Hank Kimball on Green Acres, the voice of Grandpa Little on The Littles), Helene Winston (Gladys King on King of Kensington), (Charles McGraw (Mike Burkeman in Johnny Got His Gun, Sheriff Roy Calhoun in Hang 'Em High, Tex Smith in In Cold Blood, Captain Frank Gibbons in The Defiant One), Ron Feinberg (the voice of Ming the Merciless on Defenders of the Earth, the voice of Doc Terror on Centurions, Detective Johnson on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman), Dickie Jones (Buffalo Bill Jr. on Buffalo Bill Jr., Dick West on The Range Rider), L.Q. Jones (T.C. in The Wild Bunch, Pat Webb in Casino, Styles in The Edge, Beldan in The Virginian, Taggert in The Ballad of Cable Hogue).
The special effects are limited to a few instances of bloodletting - although to their credit, the lighting crew kept each of these sequences dim enough that every bit of plasma committed to film comes across with decent consistency and coloration. That said, I think mentioning the "screamers" through dialogue without ever intending to show one is an unforced error. If you're not gonna show us the radioactive mutants roaming the wastelands there's no reason to bring them up, and it's damned disappointing for the audience to be teased with the prospect of slime-glopola goodness that fails to materialize.
The shooting locations are excellent, with principal photography being completed in the God-forsaken Mojave Desert, and Coyote Dry Lake, California, where you've gotta look miles off in the distance to find even minimal signs of life. We're talkin' seriously inhospitable terrain, and while it may not sound like a big deal to haul out into the middle of nowhere to get footage of the desert, I appreciate the attention to detail and respect the cast and crew's willingness to contract permanent skin cancer and spend an hour blowin' dust outta their noses every night for the sake of their art. These days they'd shoot all these scenes in a studio with a green screen and that kinda thing pulls me out of a movie faster'n a theater usher who just caught me proppin' my feet up on the seat in front. The bunker sequence was filmed at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, which is one of three satellite communications stations (the others are in Madrid and Canberra) NASA uses to shoot the shit with interplanetary spacecraft sendin' images of Uranus back to Earth, and this was a pretty big get for the production because as brief as these scenes are, they really boost the production values and lend an air of credibility to a dystopian film that, up to that point, was projecting some seriously goofy vibes. Bottom line - superb location scouting, permission wrangling, and cinematography.
The soundtrack is the one area where I feel they leaned a little too hard into the nonchalant tone of the flick. I understand that there's a very strong, deliberate degree of social satire pervading the story and I have no objection to it, but the light-hearted acoustic guitar with cheerful whistling accompaniment is just a little over the top for me. I think it's probably the whistling that does it, but that's just my personal opinion and even so, it's not completely off base - just a little. That said, Tim McIntire's folk song, "A Boy and His Dog," that plays over the closing credits following the comedically dark closing dialogue, feels permissible given the amusingly bleak climax that's just taken place. And even though I believe some of the music in the early-going tilts slightly sillier than what's intended, the score is still a net positive because it fits the general tone of the story and crops up at just the right moments to remind you not to take the movie too seriously.
Overall, I do prefer the conventional approach to nuclear holocaust films where the world's gone to hell and what remains of civilization is gloomy, depressing, and likely to slit its own mama's throat for a nickel, but Harlan Ellison's approach is still very entertaining and unique for its refusal to play by the rules. Not quite on par with the Chuck Heston epics of the era, but still miles ahead of the Mad Max clones that dominated the '80s, and well worth tracking down - definitely check it out.
Rating: 73%