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CUJO
Rating: 
USA. 1983.
Director – Lewis Teague, Screenplay – Lauren Currier & Don Carlos Dunaway, Based on the Novel by Stephen King, Producers – Daniel H. Blatt & Robert Singer, Photography – Jan De Bont, Music – Charles Bernstein, Special Effects – Rick Josephson, Mechanical Effects/Makeup – Peter Knowlton, Production Design – Guy Comtois. Production Company – Sunn Classics/Taft International.
Cast:
Dee Wallace (Donna Trenton), Daniel Hugh-Kelly (Vic Trenton), Danny Pintuaro (Tad Trenton), Christopher Stone (Steve Kemp), Ed Lauter (Joe Camber), Kualani Lee (Charity Camber)
Plot: Donna Trenton is discovered by her husband Vic to be having an affair with Steve Kemp. Vic leaves town to sort things out. While he is away Donna drives their car out to the Camber farmhouse to have it repaired. But there the car breaks down and Donna and her son Tad are trapped in it by Cujo, a rabid St Bernard.
Cujo is a muchly underrated adaptation of the 1981 Stephen King novel. Cujo wasn’t much liked at the time it came out but has considerable merits. The screenwriters (and Stephen King who reportedly worked on the script but declined credit) have considerably streamlined the book. All the elements featuring the ghost of Frank Dodds (the killer from The Dead Zone) have been dumped, making Cujo a far more straight-forward non-fantastic animals amok film, along the lines of Jaws (1975) and its body of imitators. Being a Hollywood film it has also dumped Stephen King’s tragic ending where the son dies for a more upbeat note.
That said Cujo works rather well. Director Lewis Teague, then previously known for the amusing B-budget hit Alligator (1980), was brought in at two days notice after Peter Medak, director of The Changeling (1980) and Species II (1998), quit. And Teague does a most impressive job. The first half concerning itself with Dee Wallace’s affair (the man she is having an affair with is real-life husband Christopher Stone) is less interesting. Although it is well performed by all concerned, the characterization is thin on the ground and it is merely prelude to the main action anyway.
But it is during the last forty minutes that Lewis Teague transforms the film into an outstanding orchestration of suspense and terror. The entire scenario is centered around Dee Wallace and Danny Pintuaro trapped inside the fragile refuge of a broken-down Pinto by the rabid dog outside. Teague restricts action entirely to this location – the suspense generates from the building and then shattering of each possible hope and unexpected turn of events. Teague uses every cinematic trick at his disposal – from crane cameras to 360 degree pans and cutaway cars. Indeed here the film is not unfavourably comparable to the agoraphobic second half of Jaws (1975).
Lewis Teague subsequently returned to Stephen King material with the King-penned anthology Cat’s Eye (1985). Teague’s other genre outings are the future prison film Wedlock/Deadlock (1991).
Other Stephen King genre adaptations include:- Carrie (1976), Salem’s Lot (1979), The Shining (1980), Christine (1983), The Dead Zone (1983), Children of the Corn (1984), Firestarter (1984), Cat’s Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985), The Running Man (1987), Pet Semetary (1989), Graveyard Shift (1990), It (tv mini-series, 1990), Misery (1990), a segment of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), Sometimes They Come Back (1991), The Lawnmower Man (1992), The Dark Half (1993), Needful Things (1993), The Tommyknockers (tv mini-series, 1993), The Stand (tv mini-series, 1994), The Langoliers (tv mini-series, 1995), The Mangler (1995), Thinner (1996), The Night Flier (1997), Quicksilver Highway (1997), The Shining (tv mini-series, 1997), Trucks (1997), Apt Pupil (1998), The Green Mile (1999), Hearts in Atlantis (2001), Carrie (tv mini-series, 2002), Dreamcatcher (2003), Riding the Bullet (2004), ‘Salem’s Lot (tv mini-series, 2004), Secret Window (2004), Desperation (tv mini-series, 2006), Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King (tv mini-series, 2006), 1408 (2007) and The Mist (2007). Stephen King had also written a number of original screen works with Creepshow (1982), Golden Years (tv mini-series, 1991), Sleepwalkers (1992), Storm of the Century (tv mini-series, 1999), Rose Red (tv mini-series, 2002) and the tv series Kingdom Hospital (2004), as well as adapted his own works with the screenplays for Cat’s Eye, Silver Bullet, Pet Semetary, The Stand and The Shining. King also directed one film with Maximum Overdrive (1986).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1990
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