Cujo (4K Review) — Visceral Stephen King Adaptation

Released in 1983, Cujo came out just as Stephen King adaptations were about to explode in popularity. The release of Carrie, Salem’s Lot and The Shining in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the quality of those films, meant that practically any Stephen King adaptation was bound to gather a large audience. 1983 alone would see the author’s work adapted an impressive five times.

While John Carpenter was making a masterpiece out of Christine and David Cronenberg stepped briefly away from body horror with The Dead Zone, the lesser-known director Lewis Teague adapted the extremely simple story of Cujo, in which a mother and her young son are trapped in their broken-down car with a rabid dog prowling around just outside, waiting for them.

Teague’s film takes a little while to arrive at that premise, though, with characters built up through 40 minutes of domestic drama before their encounter with the terrifying but sympathetic rabid dog. It focuses primarily on Donna (Dee Wallace, shortly after appearing in ET and The Howling) and her anxious son Tad (Danny Pintauro) as the former navigates the pain and guilt of having an affair and the latter is convinced that there are monsters in his bedroom each night.

This is quite patient buildup for such a short film, taking almost half of the 93-minute running time to establish the characters before dropping them into the catchy premise that the majority of audience members are undoubtedly more interested in. But it works quite well once our two leading characters are trapped together, giving the audience an understanding of their helplessness and their emotional states before encountering one of cinema’s most memorable dogs.

As with any film set in only one area for a prolonged amount of time, Cujo is more reliant than most films on those two leading performances and on the cinematography of the great Jan de Bont, who went on to shoot Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October and Basic Instinct. Wallace is good enough to keep the film functioning. Even though she’s forced to carry much of it on her back, she mostly does a good job. But it is really the performances of the anguished Danny Pintauro and the dog itself (or dogs, plural—Cujo was played by multiple dogs, mechanical props, a stuntman and even other dogs in costume, with many sound effects provided by voice actor Frank Welker) which enhance Cujo to make it quite so frightening alongside some surprisingly strong practical effects. Jan De Bont also helps energise the film by knowing when to move the camera and when to opt for stasis and eke out the tension.

The film may have a rather abrupt ending, but most of Cujo is quite strong, and the background thematic focus on classism, domestic difficulties and the clear comparison between the monstrousness of the film’s human villains (who choose to act as they do) and Cujo (a victim of circumstance and disease) help to make it more interesting, too. This film certainly isn’t on the same level as Carrie, The Shining or a number of other Stephen King adaptations released after Cujo’s arrival in 1983, but it is a solid and quite effective thriller that knows better than to overstay its welcome, unlike many other King adaptations.

Arrow Video’s upcoming release of the film includes both the theatrical cut and the international cut. The theatrical version of the film is generally considered to be the director’s cut, with the international version of the film slightly cutting down some of those character-focused first-act sequences. The release also includes a plethora of special features, including numerous audio commentaries, interviews, and a behind-the-scenes documentary about the film’s production directed by Laurent Bouzereau.

4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Limited Edition Special Features