Cujo

Rabies from a bat in an underground cave, through a nasty bite, turn a seemingly non-hostile St Bernard into a rabid monster whose horrifying ferociousness pins a terrified mother and son in their station wagon during a sweltering summer day. In my mind, Lewis Teague’s best film and a gold standard killer dog movie that distills as much suspense from its simple premise as one could muster. Dee Wallace had, up to this point—and would continue to be—become a horror genre mainstay, but I would be hard-pressed to come up with a better performance from her work than Cujo. The movie, and her performance, is really damn good. 

While this film does provide a reason behind Cujo’s ferocity, it is a known fact that dogs, in general, have been known to attack without provocation. Because the situation, for the most part, feels like it could easily happen, I think that only adds dramatic power to the film’s plot…it could happen to anyone, and the film really does a swell job of milking that possibility.

 I remember the first time I watched it, asking myself (this, when I was a teenager) how on earth these characters would survive such a seemingly inescapable scenario. Teague wants to give the characters definition before the terror kicks up a storm, and establishes that while this family of three (including the father) seem to have a rather satisfying relationship, Wallace is sleeping with her husband’s best friend (played by then-husband Christopher Stone, The Howling, who would later pass away from a heart attack at a young age of 53). The little son is frightened of monsters in the closet, which gives his later terror added leverage after pops assures him that beasts are not real, Cujo proving that they are. The husband is an ad man whose cereal campaign has hit a disaster thanks to the food’s poisoning children thanks to bad ingredients (it isn’t his fault that the food was bad, but because he and his partners were responsible for so many children eating the product, their careers are potentially in jeopardy). When hubby sees his woman kissing his pal, while driving home after their cereal account is lost, it turns from bad to worse.

Teague steadily shows the disease plaguing Cujo: each scene we see him, he looks worse and worse. It is important for us to notice that Cujo just doesn’t turn vicious overnight, but his decline is gradual until he’s damn near demonic. I think the film’s success is that we sympathize with Cujo because of how the film establishes that the dog was friendly at one point and its plight is not of its own making. Just a dog being a dog, chasing after a rabbit, and found a den of bats that gave it a bite so poisonous it causes an evil transformation. The way the film visualizes Cujo’s rabies infestation, it is almost like the dog’s possessed.

I think it was important for Teague to show just what Cujo was capable of. Not only that but we needed to get an indication of just how much length and girth a St Bernard has. These two are both set up when Cujo attacks its owner’s junkyard buddy in his own home, going right at his throat with a dedication that is truly petrifying. Cujo leaves him a bloody mess, throat torn open, as the owner finds him. Cujo’s owner is a rather unpleasant fellow, an auto mechanic who is obviously abusive towards his wife and kid (some early scenes show how they are nervous and worried around him). This mechanic is to work on the in-need-of-repairs station wagon, and as it goes dead when Wallace and her son arrive to his house, Cujo is there waiting, immediately striking at them. It makes its intentions quite clear; a battle of wills will begin and it will take ingenuity and survival instincts in order for Wallace to upend her canine monstrosity. 

To have a little boy in the car, and Cujo right there guarding them, Wallace will have to figure out a means to trick it if such an instance arises. As the film continues, Cujo’s face is slimier and more Satanic. Also, the film conveys how smart and patient Cujo is. I think a great scene has Wallace awakening after an overnight sleep, with Cujo staring at her from outside the driver’s side window. What I also truly find to be an excellent key scene has Wallace eyeing a baseball bat a few feet away (this after we see Cujo pacing quietly; it waits)…why I think it works so well is because just a few feet seems like a mile because of how Teague frames the distance. Something else, a ringing phone that bugs the stew out of Cujo causes the mutt to go crazy at one point and he charges Wallace’s car like a raging bull towards a matador’s cape. I swear, when Cujo is on top of the car, it seems to have the length of a horse. The mastery behind this particular scene is that we really see how puny the car’s structure is and that the ability to hide within it is not lasting. Eventually, Cujo will find a way in. How long can the windows keep their structural integrity? Not only that, like Cujo’s descent, we see that Wallace and her son’s health is worsening. The fear, heat of the sun, starvation, exhaustion: it all is right there in their worsening conditions. Wallace also ably shows the mental and physical deterioration; when she slips out of the car just for a moment, Cujo goes on a tear, ripping at her and one chomp really leaves her in a bad way. We know that the bite will disease her and that only adds to the importance of getting out of the car and to safety (and, most importantly, to a hospital). Teague has one powerful scene where he circles his camera inside the station wagon right after Wallace was attacked and left in terrible shape, heightening the maddening situation. When her son has a seizure, and she tries to get out, Cujo charging, it further reiterates that escape is crucial for them. This film builds and builds upon that desperation.

Christopher Stone’s character might seem to be a throwaway, but his purpose is to throw a wrench into the domestic bliss of the family, and his despicable behavior in implicating himself in a possible abduction through infiltrating the Wallace home, taking scissors and tearing pillowcases, causing feathers to scatter all over, temporarily delays the father’s time from saving his wife and child. 

I think Cujo adds prestige to a woman’s heroism. Men as knights in shining armour fail to aid her, an example being a police officer who is instantly accosted upon arrival by Cujo as the dog disposes of him relatively easily, and the husband fails to arrive in her time of need. To save her child who is close to death, a mother will have to get out of the car, get that bat, and face her menace. She does and Teague cleverly avoids showing a real animal suffer an attack, using POV and shots of Cujo getting up with Wallace wildly swinging and connecting at the camera’s lens; it doesn’t look phony, actually, and the frenetic nature, and the intensity of this seconds of warfare, really hits on all cylinders, with the creature vanquished, a child kept from succumbing to his illness. Of course, even Teague can’t resist the killer not coming at our heroine one last time, bursting through a windowed door, a mother once more having to put it down with the cop’s revolver. Just solid acting and filmmaking. Cujo delivers the goods.