FAQ

No. The dog was actually a man in a suit or an animatronic puppet for the more intense scenes.

Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace) and her young son Tad (Danny Pintauro) are trapped for three days in a hot car while a rabid St. Bernard named Cujo lies outside waiting to attack them.

Cujo (1981) is also a novel by American horror writer Stephen King. The book was adapted for the movie by screenwriter Lauren Currier.

The beginning of the movie, where Tad sees a "monster" in his closet much like Cujo, suggests to some viewers that there was something sinister at play in Cujo's attacks besides him being in the final stages of rabies, but that idea is never addressed during the rest of the movie. In the novel, Cujo is likened to a human "monster" named Frank Dodd who appeared in The Dead Zone (1979), also written by Stephen King, and some readers conclude that Cujo was possessed by Dodd's spirit. However, it's made clear in the opening narration that Frank Dodd is dead and "moldered inside his coffin." Anyone familiar with King's works knows that a sense of evil seems to lurk beneath the surface in Castle Rock (as well as in Jerusalem's Lot and Derry), and every now and then, it emerges in various forms. King refers to this "evil" as a monster that never dies. Whether Cujo is a manifestation of this monster, possessed by Frank Dodd, or just a dog with rabies is up to each viewer to decide.

The movie hit the theatres in 1981. Most likely, the theatrical version has been released on most of the first edition VHS releases. It is also included on the US DVD by Artisan. Later then, a director's cut has been released which is the most common version nowadays. Although the director's cut is longer then the theatrical version, it misses some footage too.

Several movies featuring killer dogs have been recommended by viewers of Cujo. They include The Breed (2006), in which a group of students are trapped on an island with a pack of mutated dogs intent on killing them, Danger Doberman (1973), in which a man is trapped in a department store that is guarded by six vicious Dobermans, Wilderness (2006), in which a group of juvenile delinquents are confined on an island patrolled by a man with a crossbow and his pack of killer dogs, and Rottweiler (2004), in which an escaped prisoner is chased by a cybernetic Rottweiler. Other killer dog movies worth mentioning include Zoltan, le chien sanglant de Dracula (1977), Les Assiégés (1977), Max, le meilleur ami de l'homme (1993), where the dog is a genetic mutant, Barghast : Les chiens de l'enfer (1978), where the dog is a minion of Satan, and Dressé pour tuer (1982).