A Boy & His Dog
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Movie Reviews of A Boy & His Dog
Movie Review: Good sci fi movie: "Classic"? funny world after the fall movie.
Summary: 4 Stars
I remember hearing about it, back in the day,
but this is the first time I actually have seen it.
It reminds me of the Mad Max movies in the 80's:
probably Don Johnson's first role.
The telepathic dog thing is pretty good.
It took mankind 10000 years to build any civilization,
and as Einstein once predicted,
it was pretty much all gone in five days.
We seem very much bent on a future much like this;
even the dates are close; 2008 WW IV....
Movie Review: A cult favorite
Summary: 4 Stars
I saw this flick when it came out in the mid-1970s and it is still a guilty pleasure and a cult favorite. Civilization has fallen apart, and the protagonist and his dog are scratching out a subsistence existence. But not just any dog -- this one was genetically bred for human-level intelligence and telepathy. There is much more to the story, and it is well worth the trip. Lots of humor, and an ending that you likely not forget or foresee. RJB.Movie Review: Old School Si-Fi
Summary: 4 Stars
Hey, Don Johnson, before he was DON JOHNSON! If you have seen it, then you know it is a movie that ends with Good Taste!Movie Review: The most conservative work of fiction I've ever read.
Summary: 3 Stars
Portions of the movie take place at night or indoors and it's a bit too dark. At times the musical score and the sound effects are perfect and at times they are a major distraction. The script is really brought to life though. It's a very good adaptation of the story. It concerns a boy, Vic, and his intelligent K-9 traveling companion, 'Blood'. They travel across a post-apocalypse landscape in search of food, sex, and good times. Blood the dog is actually smarter than Vic, and telepathic. The audience can hear what he says/thinks. Similar to Dean Koontz 'The Watchers', he's descended from dogs who have been genetically engineered for war.
In the middle of the movie, honest to goodness, there's a scene where it's apparent there's a love triangle between Vic, Blood, and the character of Quilla June, a girl from an underground shelter sent up to lure one of the young male solo 'rovers' underground. Quilla June ends up knocking Vic out, conveniently leaving behind her ID card/gate pass. Vic feels compelled to stalk her, follow her into the down under, presumably to get back whatever he feels she took from him, or from his well-developed sense of entitlement.
Jokes aside, it's as if the movie makers took care to make this movie PETA approved. It's not so kind to human females. When the movie begins a gang rapes and kills a young woman. When Vic, the protagonist, gets there, kind of like a scavenger, he's only sorry they killed her, "She could have been used one or two more times" he laments. It's a wonder there are so many girls around (at least Vic spends a bit of his time trying to find his next lay). From there Vic and Blood attend an old beat up movie theater (which will figure later in the review) and watch old films with the gangs. <Spoilers> When the movie ends, Vic and his dog cook and eat the heroine and love interest of the film Quilla June.
In the above ground world girls don't care too much for sex. In the original story Vic remembers raping a girl screaming all the while saying she'd get him. Afterwards he "tied her up just to be sure". In the underground world, the girls want sex. There the men are sterile, though presumably still able to do it. One reviewer saying (and I did not notice it myself) this is one of the messages of the movie, repressing men leads to them being sterile.
It's almost like two movies in one. In the second half Vic leaves Blood behind and travels to an underground city critic Roger Ebert called "a truly horrible place that looks like a cross between a Norman Rockwell small town and a circus sideshow"
The underground community has loudspeakers constantly blaring out relationship advice and recipe tips to the public. For me it tied the movie together a bit in that it reminded me of the voice over of Blood the dog giving out advice earlier in the movie. I have to admit here, If I was the boss, or owned my own island or something, this is the style of propaganda that would appear in the 'free press'.
It is a scary view of 50's America though run by 3 members of 'the committee' (three committee members who feel no compunction to follow the helpful advice given out by the loudspeaker for sure) backed up by the muscle of a single robot/android enforcer, Michael. After being written up three times for 'transgressions', citizens (whole families) are sent, "off to the farm" a euphemism for being killed by the robot. "Write down they both had heart attacks" a committee member says after disposing a case.
Vic manages to escape the underground where he's been caught by 'Michael' the robot and forced to be their sperm donor. Quilla, who steals Vic's guns back for him, helps him escape. After about 30 rounds of ammunition Vic puts their robot out of commission. This is the point in the original story where it becomes obvious it has an agenda. As they make their escape, shooting at the last townsfolk chasing them, Vic says to himself, "they should have known better than to mess with Jimmy Cagney". Cagney being the actor who always plays the gangster in the movies he loves to watch. Then of course right after their escape, there's the twist ending.
This is the most conservative work of fiction I've ever read, ever. Perhaps the filmmaker failed to convey this but I think the failure is more on the part of the viewer. Do we have an underlying fear of seeing things in an incorrect way? The original story was written in 1968. Is it difficult for us to empathize with a world view so different from the one we're ordinarily presented with?
Perhaps, though, it's just an ode to freedom, or a dark comedy where everything in existence is evil and self serving.
Or perhaps it's simply a well-needed critique of conservative America.
We're often told about the atrocities of the Nazi's. Or even of the evils of communism (although this isn't taken as seriously, hardly seriously, even when it's documented as in the case of the Khmer Rouge, when millions immigrated to America - oops were exterminated). Let's just hope next time the reader er the ringleaders will be publicly brought to justice. That should delay communism another Century or so.
Movie Review: Don't get me wrong, the movie is brilliant...
Summary: 3 Stars
...which is why I keep buying every new release that comes out in the hopes that it will be better than the last. No such luck. This is the same transfer as the previous two releases -- from the original laserdisc, and with the same problems: dropped frames, dust and scratches all over it. And despite Amazon's description, this release is NOT ANAMORPHIC, though, like the others, it is widescreen. (I've submitted a change to the description). I could live with the dust and scratches -- after all, all the known prints of this film have been knocking around for almost thirty years, and as far as I know no pristine negative exists anymore. But I *wish* we could get an anamorphic transfer. How is it that a Hugo award-winning film that is so loved by critics can be overlooked for a decent DVD treatment for so long?
Now, the good: In addition to the now-familiar (and very entertaining) L.Q. Jones commentary track which has appeared on all the others, we also get two trailers restored to the DVD (these appeared on the first release, but not the one from Slingshot). And the fact that it is available once again at all -- I didn't relish the idea of shelling out ~$100 if something happened to current copy. Kudos to Firstrun for printing 'em again.
But dangit, won't *someone* step up to the plate and give us a decent anamorphic transfer? I'm begging here, which even Blood could only bring himself to do once.