Cujo

Director: Lewis Teague

1983 / 93min / 35mm

All is not well with the Trenton family—the revelation that wife Donna (Dee Wallace) has been having an affair leaves the future of her marriage uncertain—but that seems like small potatoes when Donna and five-year-old son Tad (Danny Pintauro) find themselves trapped in her Ford Pinto by the titular rabid St. Bernard, a vehicular siege depicted with remarkable visual dynamism by cinematographer Jan de Bont. Played by four St. Bernards, a small fleet of mechanical dogs, a black Lab-Great Dane mix in St. Bernard drag, and stuntman Gary Morgan, the slavering, ravening, and seemingly unkillable Cujo—first dreamed up by Stephen King’s 1981 novel of the same name—is perhaps the screen’s most memorable canine heavy.

Distributor: Paramount

Part of The Dog Dies