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ACTOR
Don JohnsonJason RobardsSusanne BentonTim McIntire
DIRECTOR
L.Q. Jones
SYNOPSICS
A Boy and His Dog (1975) is a English movie. L.Q. Jones has directed this movie. Don Johnson,Jason Robards,Susanne Benton,Tim McIntire are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1975. A Boy and His Dog (1975) is considered one of the best Comedy,Drama,Sci-Fi,Thriller movie in India and around the world.
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A Boy and His Dog (1975) Reviews
Blood's A Winner
1975's "A Boy And His Dog" defies categorization, much like the outspoken author who penned its Nebula-winning source novella. Harlan Ellison has resisted the genre label for his entire 900+ short story career ("call me a 'science fiction' writer, and I'll come to your house and nail your pet's head to the table", he's warned), and yet his collections are stacked alongside "Sliders" novelizations in most bookstores. With its multiple world wars, mutants, and robot assassins, "A Boy And His Dog" is superficially science fiction, but only in the service of aspiring to a level of satire a la "A Clockwork Orange" or "Slaughterhouse Five". Phoenix, Arizona 2024 AD: nomadic hunter-gatherers roam the radioactive wastelands ravaged by World War Four. Libidinous Vic has managed to survive his eighteen years as a "Solo" thanks largely to the aide of his far more intelligent - not to mention telepathic - companion Blood, a "Rover" who searches out supplies, women, and enemies and provides the requisite witty repartee. A post-nuke buddy pic? Well, of sorts--you see, while most viewers will recognize recently-bankrupt "Nash Bridges" star Don Johnson as the very young solo, fewer will realize that Blood is portrayed by the same veteran who managed to avoid being stereotyped as "Tiger" on The Brady Bunch. That's right: "Rovers" are intelligent, telepathic dogs, bred for warfare. If you're thinking of tuning out--don't, because this film has a lot to offer beyond an outrageous premise. When Blood sniffs out a disguised Quilla June (Susanne Benton) at a desert camp, Vic is surprised that he won't have to force her to be his evening's bedmate. Fleeing scavengers and the dangerous "Screamers" (nocturnal mutants who roam the deserts), Quilla June convinces Vic to join her in her subterranean home "Topeka", leaving Blood behind. Quilla June's father and leader of "The Committee" Lou Craddock (Jason Robards) sent her above ground to lure Vic into impregnating Topeka's women and offers the boy all of the perks of this bizarre Our Town meets Body Snatchers hamlet. But Vic finds out that his stud service will be extremely brief if he doesn't play by the rules, and after escaping The Committee's robotic enforcer, he finds loyal Blood on the brink of death, awaiting his return. Luckily, Quilla June has tagged along, and will provide a restorative service that reinforces Vic's worldview that the only "true love" is the one between a boy and his dog... Produced in the days when "indie" typically meant "exploitation", "A Boy And His Dog" was a guerilla project for several Hollywood veterans who craved to do something different outside of "The System". Ellison had turned down big studio offers from Warners and Universal and instead handed over screen rights to L.Q. Jones, who had best been known as a stuntman (and still appears to this day in such fare as The Edge and Walker, Texas Ranger) to write and direct. The late Alvy Moore, of television's Green Acres, produced the film and appeared as Robard's accomplice "Dr. Moore". Tim McIntyre provided the voice of Blood and composed the music. Ellison wasn't happy with the Topeka sequences (and blamed his own story for their shortcomings) and was even less pleased with the film's final spoken line (a morbid pun penned by Jones). He offered to re-loop the dialogue out of his own pocket, but audiences loved the line. Despite Ellison's protests, the film impressed his peers enough for them to award it the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Fourth-time director Jones displays such a gifted eye for widescreen compositions and maximizing limited resources, and propels the story forward so breezily with witty voice-overs and bouncy acoustic score that it's amazing that he's never directed another film. The assured depiction of difficult character "Blood" is a true revelation: as voiced by McIntyre, reading dialogue more or less verbatim from Ellison's prose, the shaggy Rover ranks as one of the most believable and three-dimensional non-human screen characters--ever. I never cried when Old Yeller got shot, but I still get moist-eyed when Blood and Vic part ways at the entrance to Topeka. "A Boy And His Dog" regularly shows up on most lists of the Top 10 Science Fiction Films Of All Time, and I certainly rank it alongside another independent S.F. marvels like "Dark Star" and "THX 1138". So, do give the dog a chance; after all, Tiger won the 1975 "Patsy Award" for his performance <g> The Region 1 DVD contains audio commentary from L.Q. Jones and two trailers (the promised "liner notes" are nowhere in evidence in my version). But be warned, purists: worse than the shoddy packaging and frequent misspellings ("Harlen" Ellison?), is the print itself: marred by emulsion scratches, dirt, and missing frames throughout. Still, the cheap price, and the sad fact that this is the only version fans have to choose from until someone like Blue Underground comes to the rescue, makes this disc a Must Have.
Strange and enjoyable.
The setting of this film is not only a material wasteland, but a moral one as well. Our protaganists are a wandering teenage misogynist and his super-intelligent telepathic dog. The latter helps the former to locate potential rape victims. Their pursuit of one particular sexual quarry leads the young man on a journey into a subterranean perversion of smalltown America. The dog is the most sympathetic character in the movie, and is brilliantly voiced by Tim McIntire. If you are able to wrap your head around the bizarre moral construct, this film is a nihilistic hoot.
This is No Old Yeller
This disorderly pre-Mad Max spree is one of the most entertaining post-apocalyptic future movies ever made. You know why? Because it has no taste and in that, it has no inhibitions about the questions it asked about what will happen after the world is spent by nuclear war. It asks about how procreation will happen, how basic sexual feelings will be satisfied, and other things. It has a genuinely original plot involving telepathic dogs that are more literate than their human masters,gunfights wherein the dogs direct their human masters, an entire society underground that discerns who is apart of them or not by wearing clownface at all times, and other crazy things. It's a wild, crazy, tasteless, sex-obsessed adventure that affords the viewer one of the greatest luxuries of the movies, one that is rarely completely fulfilled, which is unpredictability. It's so inventive in every way that you don't know what happens next. Even the comical theme song is so out of place for the genre of the film, but the theme of a boy and his dog makes it suitable. A Boy and His Dog is not a great film, but it's worth watching repeatedly and showing our friends. Another buried treasure.
Kinky Cult Classic= A great film!
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.
it's post-apocalyptic, it's satiric, it's psychological, and it's a purely, originally crazy work of 70s cinema
Damned if I know what gravitated LQ Jones to Harlan Ellison's novella of the title let alone to adapt it into a film. A veteran character actor, he's the one, for better or worse (for me the better), responsible for A Boy and His Dog, a story that takes place after World War 4, nevermind 3, where a young guy and his dog, whom he can understand ala Dr Doolittle, roams the desert fighting off wild savage men and looking for food and women. But there's more than just this premise- there's also the other side to this barren wasteland which, by the way, served as inspiration for the Mad Max series. There's also the "down under", where a society that's a cross between puritanical Kansas- dubbed Topeka- and a Fellini movie, is sterilized and needs fresh seed to repopulate its people. Where the ones living up above are brutal beings who can't give a damn about anything aside from what's next to eat or who's next to have their 'way' with (and the occasional projected porn movie), the ones below have created a f***ed up enclave where a robot bodyguard chokes anything in his path. Sounds, um... peachy keen, don't it? A Boy and His Dog is as surprising an effort that has ever come into the genre, where imagination is pushed to its most cynical, rotten roots, where a wealth of pitch black comedy awaits those who have no problem with the repore between a slightly dim dude and a dog who seems to be part comic relief, part 'get-your-head-out-of-your-ass' voice of reason. Indeed, there could be something else read into all of this wackiness: if taking Freud into account, there's almost a super-ego aspect to the dog, where Vic (Don Johnson) only hears and talks with Blood (yes, a dog named Blood), who Vic trusts beyond all reason, while the boy himself is like a version of the Id, out for survival but also out for his carnal needs, no matter what the price. It's also very smart that Jones doesn't explain anything about the dog's abilities if it is meant to be that he and the dog can really talk to another. Damned if I would take a convoluted explanation anyway, all the funnier. In fact, Blood, as voiced with a perfect sardonic (yet also rather touching) style by Tim McIntire, is probably the character the audience can identify with, like the Neville/Sam bond in I Am Legend given a twist out of a Robert Crumb comic. And all the while Jones makes this a future that looks lived in, a wasteland with leftover parts and clothes and production design full of boiler rooms and dark halls and places left untreated for years, AND in the 'down under' scenes a kind of plastic, small-town look that is probably even more eerie than the one up above. For what should be just an outrageous B-movie is a lot smarter than one would ever think looking at the premise. The dialog is invigorating in how it stays truthful while also aiming for the bizarre, and as with the most cringe-worthy of satire (i.e. the scenes with Jason Robards and the 'committee'), things said with a straight face and deadly serious always garner up huge laughs. Yet there's also an intelligence to the film-making as well. This could have looked cheaply made and shot poorly like many a B-movie, but Jones's DP John Arthur Morill gets some great, strange compositions out of this 'after'-world, sometimes spotting (better than average) Johnson give facial expressions like he knows what's going on but doesn't all the same. It should be way too ridiculous to be taken seriously as a piece of legitimate cinema, as some gonzo experiment that's dug up by cultists for tongue-in-cheek purposes. But Jones's film is, in its way, a weird landmark, a moment where the basic fronts of a 70s 'exploitation' flick (action, comedy, randomness of the 70s, nudity) are put through the perspective of a filmmaker with brains and talent to make it stick in your mind, as it presents its story through the prism of a society gone amock through two prisms, both hells in one way or another (though one, not too arguably, is a lot more fun than the other). Is it a Clockwork Orange or Blade Runner? Not quite. But I'd never kick it out of my collection, if only for one of the truly classic end lines of any movie, a bad pun that gives one more hysterical smack across the face.