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A Boy and his Dog

A Boy and his Dog

L.Q. Jones

  • 1975
  • USA
  • Science-fiction / Post-apocalypse
  • 1h31mn
  • Original version with French subtitles
  • Color
Seven years after the 2017 World War, Earth is a vast desert where wandering survivors kill each other. Vic is one of them and he can communicate with his dog through telepathy. They will discover an underground world inhabited by a privileged civilisation that exploits the outside misery.
One could imagine a humanist adventure as cute as its title. One would be wrong. This adaptation of Harlan Ellison by an ex-Peckinpah actor is probably one of the most cynical, violent and nihilistic post-apocalyptic movies, darker than Mad Max 2 that drew inspiration from it. Even its hero (a very young Don Johnson) is brainless and limited to his impulses: eating, killing, raping. A Boy and his Dog drives its point home with a fiercely Marxist political message, reminiscent of Boorman's Zardoz.

Stéphan Castang

We knew it! The end of the world is scheduled for this year!

We are after the Fourth World War. There’s not much left on Earth. Survivors lack food, fuel, and sex. We follow Vic (Don Johnson, pre Miami Vice) and Blood, his telepathic dog in a dehumanized world. Helped by his dog, somewhat smarter than himself, Vic will try to satisfy his most primary instincts.

Another film I discovered as a teenager, totally by chance on TV6 (a short lived musical TV channel of the 80s that showed lots of horror and B-movies). Every time I see it again, I’m struck by the odd balance between its fierce humor and the darkness of its message.

It’s a pure 70s B movie prototype: post-apocalyptic, dark comedy, road movie, western… A Boy and His Dog is all those things at once, and yet never confusing; it retains a unique tone. Both classical and modern in its directing, it's also a forerunner of a certain kind of post nuclear war movies (it came out four years before Mad Max).

Written and directed by LQ Jones (who signed only two films), one of Peckinpah’s pet actors, A Boy and His Dog is a sort of rather cruel philosophical tale, with a biting (in every sense of the word) irony, about mankind and its future.

Those who need to feel empathy for the protagonist should pass on this one. Be warned. Vic is a total dumbass, a coward, a misogynist, a liar, owing his survival only to his telepathic dog who does the thinking for the both of them.

But if you like mean spirited films and somewhat contrasted happy endings, you’re in for a hell of a ride!

Screenings

07/09 • 19h15 • Screen 300
Screening presented by Stéphan Castang

Credits

  • With : Don Johnson, Susanne Benton, Jason Robards, Tim McIntire, Alvy Moore...
  • Screenplay : Harlan Ellison, L.Q. Jones
  • Photography : John Arthur Morrill
  • Editing : Scott Conrad
  • Music by : Tim McIntire, Jaime Mendoza-Nava
  • Production : L.Q. Jones, Alvy Moore