A Boy and His Dog

Like many artifacts of the 60s & 70s, y'hadda be there...at least in order to feel a protective fondness for what is without question a very flawed movie. The miracle of this film was that it was made AT ALL. (Due in no small part to the tenor of the times it sprang from. The shackles on pop culture and genre fiction were loosening, allowing for more serious themes and treatment; of course, two years later STAR WARS would tighten the shackles again.) I'm a little amazed at the many posters bitching about cheap sets, poor fx, etc. Does everyone watch a movie EXPECTING a 50-million-dollar budget and CGI up the wazoo? If so, we're in deeper trouble than I thought. I look at A BOY AND HIS DOG with great affection as a sincere attempt to do something different, provocative and heartfelt, and although it's informed by a naive leftist worldview I don't share, there's a great deal of audacious creativity at work here that transcends many of the budgetary limitations. You'd think oddities like this would be treasured as artifacts of a more open and experimental period in movie history, rather than derided for falling short of INDEPENDENCE DAY's store-bought bombast and opticals. Go figure...

In the year 2024 Earth has become a barren desert due to WW4. Vic is a solo, a loner who walks around in search of food and sex. He is accompanied by his telepathic dog, Blood, who uses his senses to sniff out women and food. When Blood sniffs out Susanne it leads to a terrifying journey to the underground where Vic finds himself trapped for sinister means.

This is a very basic that sticks to post-apocalypse movie rules - desert conditions, everyone searching for basic needs, loner warrior etc. The story seems to be leading nowhere but then picks up on the story of Susanne and begins treading towards the underground scenes. The main driver of the first half of the film is the relationship between Vic and Blood. Once the film moves underground, Blood is left behind and the film stutters a bit because of him being out of it. However once the story picks up again, Johnson can almost carry it. And the ending - it's not a shock or a twist but it's a quite whimsical end in a story that is about friendship.

Johnson is not too bad here, he's slagged off on these pages, but considering he's acting to a dog he does really well. It's almost like acting in a blue screen I suppose, having to respond to lines that aren't being spoken. He shows the extent of his talents when he goes underground but he's good on the surface. Composer Tim McIntire is good as Blood, but maybe makes him a little too unlikeable early on. The only other performance of interest is Jason Robards as the head of the underground committee.

Overall this is a little oddity, but it's not a brilliant film. The underground scenes are good in that they display greater imagination than those on the surface. It lacks pace for the most and really doesn't have anything to say but it's an interesting film.

More than anything else, I think this is one of those films that movie-snobs talk about in pubs because they know few people will have seen it! Forget them - it's worth seeing once.

Despite its ironically cutesy title ("A Boy and His Dog") and a plot premise that might've come out of the Walt Disney archives (dog and boy share telepathic communication), this movie is about as darkly comic and acidic as anything Stanley Kubrick ever did ("Clockwork Orange"). Sadly, as of the year 2014, almost 40 years later, the only copies you can find, even the laughable Blu-ray HD release, are in serious need of some restoration before audiences will give this film the respect it deserves. But considering its low profile appeal, I highly doubt that'll happen in our lifetimes, so grab it wherever you can.

In the tradition of the great 70s dystopian/postapocalyptic scifis like "Clockwork Orange" (1971), "Rollerball" (1975), "THX-1138" (1971), "Soylent Green" (1973), "The Omega Man" (1971) and I'll even throw in "The Stepford Wives" (1975), this movie has its appeal in a sort of minimalist presentation that presents a chillingly emotionless and sterile future. Where "A Boy and His Dog" excels is in its thick, satirical tongue-in-cheek presentation, particularly in the 2nd half when our hero encounters the true future of human society (or is it the present? You be the judge).

The first half is something like Mr. Ed meets Mad Max, with its equal portions of chatty humor and dusty violence. But right in the first scene we realize that, despite the cute banter between boy & dog, there aren't going to be many warm fuzzies. In the opening scene we learn that the boy (Don Johnson) is looking for female survivors so he can rape them.

If you can swallow that highly disturbing premise, which the director makes no bones in presenting at the outset, then the rest should be an unsettlingly fun joyride all the way to the film's very memorable punchline. Things get really trippy in the 2nd half, and even though there's minimal nudity, certain things happen which would make D.H. Lawrence blush (particularly involving a certain mechanical device attached to the male anatomy).

Definitely NOT a date movie, nor any sort of movie you'd watch with your parents or kids, "A Boy and His Dog" is really like a lost cousin of "A Clockwork Orange" or "Dr. Strangelove". Who ever would've thought that this sarcastic gem would come to light through the directing talents of L.Q. Jones, the ubiquitous guest star on many a 70s TV show like "Charlie's Angels", "Columbo", "Gunsmoke" and "Vega$" but whose only other directing credit is an episode of "The Incredible Hulk" (one which I'm going to re-watch immediately).

Unfortunately with the somewhat bland & grainy video quality of the existing print, we don't get the full eye-boggling power of this film the way one could imagine it. But all the same, it's an unusual vision which should proudly take its place amongst the other 70s masterpieces I mentioned. You can buy the Blu-ray for literally pennies on ebay, so you have no excuse for not checking this out.

Here's a ridiculous movie that never aspires, so it wallows in self-pity.

The best way to describe this is an unimaginative version of 'Mad Max' and '1984'. Sadly, this doesn't break any new ground for our imagination. The only novel element is the talking dog which, by now, isn't amazing aside from his 'Lethal Weapon'-esque conversations with Don Johnson.

Final Analysis = = Cinematic Dud

Vic and his telepathically talking sheep dog, Blood, travel post-apocalyptic Arizona. Besides scavenging for food and sex, this movie features old, terrible porn clips, evil Amish looking people with clown makeup and possibly the greatest pun in movie history. Blood provides hilarious commentary to all Vic's endeavors, his comments while Vic and a girl he finds have sex are particularly entertaining. At parts, this movie gets so strange you can't do anything but laugh at it, which is definitely not a bad thing! A Boy and His Dog is not something that will ever be universally popular, but it is a great movie for late nights and all nerds. A classic piece of science fiction.