Cujo
Short description
A St. Bernard named Cujo lives with the Camber family, who run a repair shop in rural Maine. After the dog is bitten by a rabid bat, he gradually turns vicious. Meanwhile, Donna Trenton is struggling in her marriage after her husband Vic learns she has been unfaithful. When Donna and her young son Tad drive out to the Camber shop to have their car fixed, the vehicle breaks down, leaving them trapped inside while the now-deranged dog prowls outside.
The film is a 1983 adaptation of the Stephen King novel, directed by Lewis Teague. It was his fourth feature, arriving between Fighting Back and Cat's Eye in a run of genre pictures that also includes Alligator. Dee Wallace plays Donna, with Danny Pintauro as Tad, Daniel Hugh Kelly as Vic, Christopher Stone as Steve Kemp, and Ed Lauter and Kaiulani Lee as the Cambers. The screenplay was written by Don Carlos Dunaway and Barbara Turner, and the film was produced by Daniel H. Blatt and Robert Singer.
Made for about 5 million dollars, it took roughly 21 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.1/10 from around 55,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.2/10 from about 1,170 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 5.8/10 from 45 reviews, so audiences and critics placed it at a broadly similar, modest level.
What's left behind the scenes
- Five dogs, one mechanical dog head, and a person in a dog suit were used for filming.
- To film the scene of the St. Bernard attacking the car, the trainer placed the dog's favorite toys inside.
- The dogs filming in the movie often had their tails tied to their legs, because the animals enjoyed what was happening so much that they wagged their tails tirelessly during filming. There was only one mishap – when the camera shows Cujo from behind. According to the plot, the dog is preparing to pounce on the victim while enthusiastically wagging its tail.
- The foam in Cujo's mouth was created by mixing egg whites with sugar. The dog constantly licked up this treat.
- During the filming of the attack scene, Danny Pintauro actually bit Dee Wallace-Stone on the fingers. The actress's reaction was completely genuine.
- Stephen King wrote the story of Cujo after he once took his motorcycle in for repair and saw the mechanic's dog.
- During filming, Danny Pintauro was only six years old and could not yet read. He memorized his lines by rote, and his mother, who was constantly on set, helped him with this.
- In some scenes, a Rottweiler was used because the Saint Bernard looked too friendly.
- The fog in the scene where Brett comes across the already infected Cujo was created using a fog machine, also known as a smoke machine. So much smoke or fog was produced that the local fire department thought the forests were on fire.
- The plot revolves around Donna and her son locking themselves in a car to escape Cujo, where it becomes hot and stuffy. In reality, it was cold during filming. At one point, heaters even had to be squeezed into the car so the actors wouldn't freeze, but they still had to be turned off for shooting so their noise wouldn't interfere with the filming process.
- According to the author of the original novel, Stephen King, on which the film’s screenplay was based, he barely remembers working on “Cujo” because he was heavily using drugs at the time.
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