'Cujo'

I wanna leave very clear here that I am not a fangirl. I have brushed (vigorously and with enthusiasm) on the border between fangirlism and keeping most of my braincells intact, and as such I have made it through 20 years of fandoms with only a few minor vocabulary quirks, a couple of strange (if awesome) hairdos and no tattoos of the Federation logo, Wolverine claw marks, Freddy Mercury's face, Dragon Ball #3, Triforce, Raistlin's eye or The One Ring. I do, however, like Stephen King's books a lot - which does not bar me from admitting the man managed to tap the key to primordial and irrational fears once, and has been tapping it so often for so long and with such strenght it's now stuck and melted down to bullshit. But I shall approach that in its own article, for now, let's get to the point.

I tend to look back at a time when Stephen King's books weren't bullshit and he still had the gift with love. The man could pick up a ride in the subway, arguably the most boring moment of your day, and make it so that you'd soil your pants just thinking about it without resorting to any of the existing clichés. It is because of this I love Cujo - it could happen to anyone whose balls Murphy decided to bust on a Monday.

So Cujo shows you the worst days of Donna Trenton and her son Tad's life. Which would be, locked inside a car for days in the peak of August while a rabid St. Bernard keeps close watch waiting for the moment to rip away a steak off their frail, soft bodies. Directed by Lewis Teague in 1983 (Lewis Teague being responsible for the very funny if Indiana Jonesque The Jewel of the Nile in 1985), it featured Dee Wallace (recently seen in Halloween's remake), Daniel Hugh Kelly (in its debut, although he would later show up in several TV series and Star Trek: Insurrection) and Danny Pintauro (as little Tad, being hired for the series Who's The Boss? afterwards. Also did anyone else find it odd his last name is "Pintauro" and the car he and his would-be mother get stuck in is a Pinto?)

From here on, as usual, rabid SPOILERS will be watching closely, so close this browser window if you have no interest in ruining movies for yourself.

I liked Cujo for several reasons, aside from the fact it is a situation likely to happen to anyone with industrial amounts of ill luck (like, for instance, me) and it having been made in the 80's, before the era of the CGI. It was beautifully made, making the best use of trained dogs and effectively explaining the setting in the first ten minutes without a single line of dialog: this is a huge dog who gets rabies and it's only a matter of time until something horrid happens. It is also a movie that, if made by Disney, would feature a series of close shots of the dog's eyes implying a "Kill Me" wish as if the dog was actually conscious in there somewhere and actually wanted to stop ripping throats off people. And probably a shot of its teenage owner crying as someone lifted a double barrel onto its poor, disease-altered nose. Which would be wrong, because that's not how rabies acts, and would turn an otherwise decent thriller into a tearful drama.

Instead, you get the fairly faithful picture of what a St. Bernard with rabies is like. It's a huge dog, a heavy dog that usually wouldn't harm a fly but which happens to be mad. Sure, it's not anyone's fault (but his asswipe owner's, who didn't give it proper shots, and the man dies - badabing), surely not the dog's, but this is hardly the time to pity it - it wants to kill you! This is a problem with modern day horror: it somehow wants to make you see situations from the threat's point of view. And I do, really. This is not an evil dog, it's a sick dog, but that doesn't alter the fact it wants me dead!

There is also a subplot-like story about Donna Trenton, our heroine du jour, who has a successful, loving husband and an adorable 4-year-old, but still decides to cheat. Her husband finds out about it as he is about to leave on business, and so they're in bad terms by the time she is faced with the dog. I still don't know how I feel about this, seeing as apparently she is cheating out of boredom (and I can empathize with doing stupid stuff because you're bored out of your bloody mind, but that's not the point). The point is: how does a tragic-romantic subplot fit in a story about a maddened dog? Normally, it wouldn't: this is about Donna, her son, the fact nobody will be around to miss them for a few days and the fact there's a rabid dog wanting to kill her. Unfortunately the novel version of Cujo is as easy to find in national territory as the Ark of the Covenant. So I don't know if there is more to this subplot than reinforcing the Trenton couple relationship by placing her in danger's way or leaving the impression that people who do bad things, like cheating, get bitten in the ass by karma. But still, it is a welcome break from normal Hollywood romantic subplots in which the protagonists live in the perfect, flawless marriage before the shit hits the fan on them. So it's something I usually dislike, but in comparison to the mainstream way of doing it, it actually becomes a colorful marshmallow in an otherwise undiscernible sea of bland toasted oats.

At this point I should probably bring out that this was made in the 80's and what we nowadays understand as "mainstream way of doing things" wasn't set in slabs of stone yet. Go 80's.

Subplot issues apart, the acting is pretty good from the leading cast, and the dialog is actually bearable. The only line I found offensive to my intelligence was that the dog's owner, shortly before dying at the jaws of his own pet, decides to clarify what's happening in case they're showing this movie to a retarded audience: "Cujo? Oh my God... you're rabid!" I could hear the cynical moviegoer in the back of my head clapping tediously and making me chuckle, facepalm and yell obscenities (not necessarily in this order), but I can let that one slide since the character's own irresponsability towards Cujo, who of course trusts his owner to take care of him, is repaid in full when he dies a gruesome death.

The soundtrack is as it should be: secondary. Nobody cares for the soundtrack of Cujo as they would for, say, Star Wars. It's a thriller, it doesn't need an epic soundtrack (Saw, I'm looking right at you: nice music, bad timing), it just needs something that will help with ambience from time to time and this is exactly what it does. I'm glad to see that at a point, not everybody in the movie making industry were complete dolts.

The golden scene in Cujo is delivered about midway through the movie. I find it absolute gold because I know the hand of Murphy when I see it, and I can see it so clearly in this scene that I was able to tell he chews on his fingernails. In this scene, Donna and her son are inside the Pinto, having driven it to a mechanic workshop in the middle of nowhere because it's in dire need of fixing. The car further proves it's a piece of crap by dying at the workshop door. Shortly after, the dog shows up, and the thriller per se begins: Donna is stranded inside a car in the peak of August with her infant son. After a while, she decides to check if the car will start after cooling off, and she is given a chance: the car actually starts! In this setting, any of us would get out of dodge without so much as a blink. But this is not what Donna does: instead, she turns the car around, looks at the St. Bernard like she's a nose hair away from flipping the bird at it, insulting its mother and blowing tailpipe smoke right up its nostrils, and utters a very smug "Fuck you, dog". Of course, Murphy doesn't like smug, so he decides to repay it: the car dies again, this time for good. For me, this is absolute, Murphy-made gold.

The worst scene would probably be a half-hearted attempt by a police officer to save Donna and her spawn. A single cop drives into the workshop and leaves the car to check out the surroundings. He would eventually spot Donna and her son inside the Pinto and help them. But of course Cujo, lost in the annals of hydrophobia, thinks otherwise, and charges for the police officer (dare I say, like a cop to the box of donuts?). So... you are an armed police officer and there's an INCOMING RABID ST. BERNARD, what do you do? Pull out old Mabel and shoot it before it reaches you would probably be your answer... but not this particular police officer's. Instead, he decides to run, and since Cujo is arguably in a better shape, the cavalry goes to smithereens before even realizing there was a problem.

In conclusion, it is a movie worth watching, it will keep you interested and it's well-executed, and probably one of the nicest adaptations of a Stephen King novel to movie, like The Shining or Carrie. It is also the man's favorite, that alone should say enough. If you're giving, say, Desperation or Rose Red a thought, I would advise you to check this first. It's much better, has much less pretention and it's from the time Stephen King wrote good novels and decent movies were made out of them (anyone who mentions Maximum Overdrive will be murdered horribly with gold clubs and gum).