By Erin Free
In the world of science fiction literature, author Harlan Ellison (Angry Candy, Dangerous Visions, Strange Wine) is a true original, and his novella gets truly original big screen treatment courtesy of director L.Q Jones with this bizarre curio from 1975. A fresh-faced Don Johnson stars as Vic, a scrappy young punk scavenging his way through a dilapidated, post-Apocalyptic America with the help of his constant companion, a dog called Blood who he can, ah, communicate with telepathically. If you’re thinking this all sounds a bit Disney, then think again. All Vic thinks about is sex, and he uses Blood to sniff out female “company” for him. But when Vic is lured into an underground society considerably politer than the savage world above, he gets far more than he bargained for when he’s used to impregnate all of its women because the men are all infertile due to a lack of sunshine!
The tone of the film is kinky and weird from the get-go, and it only gets stranger when things head below ground, with a pancake-makeup-wearing Jason Robards officiating over a community steeped in apple pie Americana but rotten to the core. Predating Mad Max 2 by several years, A Boy And His Dog was one of the first films to prescribe a future world covered in filth, mud and grime. Director L.Q Jones (who is more recognised as an actor, featuring in five character roles for Sam Peckinpah, and memorably appearing as a Stetson-wearing good ol’ boy who puts it over Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s Casino) creates an off-kilter world ruled by roving gangs and marauders with the only respite being old porno stag reels thrown up in makeshift cinemas. It’s a cruel vision, and Jones powers it even further with a series of highly inventive shots and vividly created sets, all put together on little more than a shoestring.
“It’s an intricately designed little picture,” L.Q. Jones told Rotten Tomatoes in 2008. “It doesn’t look like it though…it looks like we shot it out of a garage! It’s been chosen by a lot of critics as the best science fiction picture ever. That’s BS, but it’s better than having them say that it’s the worst motion picture ever made.” A Boy And His Dog certainly isn’t the best science fiction movie ever made, but it’s definitely one of the most original and influential, and its backstory is almost as unusual as the film itself, with L.Q. Jones claiming on the film’s DVD audio commentary that the dog was nearly nominated for an Oscar; that screen icon James Cagney had contemplated coming out of retirement to provide the voice; that several Hollywood studios had offered him millions to shoot the film for them; and that George Miller had stated that with Mad Max 2 he was merely making the mainstream version of A Boy And His Dog!
