Friday, February 21, 2014

A Boy and His Dog


Released in 1975 Directed by L.Q. Jones
Starring Don Johnson, Jason Robards, Susanne Benton.

Considered one of the essential movies of the PA genre, A Boy and His Dog features one of the greatest challenges in filmmaking, or acting. That is, a lone character must carry most of the movie by himself. Fortunately it doesn't put you to sleep the way Will Smith did forty years later.

Based on the novel "A Walk in the Sun", Vic and his dog wander about a post-nuclear wasteland scrounging up whatever food they can find, and Vic being about seventeen or so, looking for any sexual relief he can get (with a human, not the dog). He seems to be psychically linked to the dog, providing some great comic relief, and the pacing is well played enough that it doesn't get too boring. The two have a deal for survival. Vic finds the dog food, and the dog finds vic some pussy. it's like Fin and Jake without the subtlety.

Eventually Vic comes across a girl who spreads out for him and brings him to a random door in the desert, you know, the kind that someone was nice enough to pop up in the middle of nowhere with nothing around it. What could be behind the door? It could be dangerous and full of giant rats, it could be a new car! No, it's stairs. Stairs that lead down, way down underground to a community of painfully old-fashioned white people who have locked themselves under the Earth with lotsa of makeup in a sort of creepy uber-religious 1950s existence and having never allowed themselves above ground, have become sterile. Well the men have. So Vic is offered the chance of a lifetime. Stay with the freaky deakies and fuck all their girls to continue the human population. At least, they assume they're the only ones left, by the arrogance of most religious fanatics they're convinced they must be right. Vic accepts, but it's not quite what it seems.

Definitely a classic of sci-fi movies, and apparently the biggest influence of Mad Max, the crown jewel of all PA films. So if you're a fan of the genre, you kind of have to see this before you can claim the title.






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