31 Days of Horror: Cujo (1983) — The Day the Monster Was Man’s Best Friend

Cujo

Directed by: Lewis Teague

Written by: Don Carlos Dunaway, Barbara Turner

Starring: Dee Wallace, Danny Pintauro, Ed Lauter

Release Date: August 12, 1983

Stephen King’s Cujo (1983) turns man’s best friend into a nightmare. Dee Wallace delivers one of her most intense performances in this tense, claustrophobic horror classic.

“It’s Not a Monster Movie… Until It Is”

You can argue that Cujo isn’t a monster movie. A dog getting rabies is a tragic story, one loaded with dread and sorrow rather than supernatural evil. But as written by Stephen King and directed by Lewis Teague, Cujo plays with the same tension and structure as the best monster movies.

In fact, having seen Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, I can say that Cujo is every bit as frightening as the Indo-Raptor — just with more heartbreak and realism.

A Family in Crisis

The film opens with a child’s primal fear: monsters in the closet. Danny Pintauro, years before his fame on Who’s the Boss?, plays Tad Trenton, a little boy who will be forever changed by the end of this story.

His parents, Dee Wallace and Daniel Hugh Kelly, are already in turmoil. Donna (Wallace) is having an affair; Vic (Kelly) is about to find out. The emotional strain in their marriage sets the tone for a film where every relationship is on the verge of breaking — just like the calm before Cujo’s storm.

The Bite That Starts It All

When Vic needs his car fixed, he takes it to local mechanic Joe Camber (Ed Lauter), a gruff man living on a rural property with his massive St. Bernard, Cujo.

In the opening minutes, we watch Cujo chase a rabbit into a hole and get bitten by bats. It’s a quietly horrifying scene, and Teague’s direction foreshadows the transformation to come. The moment that bite sinks in, the countdown begins.

Teague wisely builds Cujo’s descent into madness slowly. We see glimpses of infection, that bloodied snout, those heavy breaths — and then, about 45 minutes in, Cujo finally snaps. The result is one of the most terrifying creature reveals in 1980s horror.

The Siege at the Farm

The heart of Cujo is a claustrophobic standoff between Donna, Tad, and the now-rabid dog. When Donna’s car breaks down at the Camber farm, she becomes trapped inside her vehicle with her terrified son while Cujo circles outside, blood and drool dripping from his snout.

Teague shoots the sequence with animalistic intensity, often from the dog’s point of view. The audience knows what’s coming long before Donna does — and when Cujo attacks, it’s pure, primal terror.

For nearly half the film, we’re locked in that car with Donna and Tad, feeling every scream, every drop of sweat, every breath of exhaustion. It’s Rear Window by way of Jaws, and Wallace sells every moment.

A Monster Without Malice

The brilliance of Cujo is that it’s not a story about evil — it’s a story about innocence corrupted. Cujo isn’t a villain; he’s a victim. The horror comes not from malice but from inevitability.

That’s what makes the film’s final act so brutal. The terror is tangible, but so is the sadness. It’s the kind of horror King does best — human and heartbreaking.

Final Thoughts: B-Movie Terror at Its Best

Cujo isn’t perfect. The family drama early on feels clunky and disconnected, and the subplot about Vic’s ad career drags the pace. But once Cujo goes full beast, the movie transforms into something primal and unforgettable.

The effects are grisly and grounded, with the makeup and costuming on the dog creating a disturbingly lifelike depiction of rabies-induced madness. Cujo may not rank among the top-tier King adaptations, but it’s one of the most viscerally frightening.

For drive-in horror fans and lovers of creature features with emotional bite, Cujo remains a terrifying standout of early ’80s cinema.

Movie Review It Chapter 1

Stephen King's It (2017)

Directed by Andy Muschietti 

Written by Chase Parker, Cary Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman

Starring Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgard, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis 

Release Date September 8th, 2017

September 7th, 2017 

To say that the 2017 take on Stephen King’s Magnum Clown Opus IT is better than the 1990 mini-series is an understatement. The mini-series was a punishing nearly four-hour mix of a pretty good kids’ story and a nearly impossible to watch adult story. Jettisoning the adult story in favor of focusing on the far superior kids’ story from King’s novel, the 2017 IT crafts a tightly wound, creepy horror flick that plays on some serious issues about grief and abuse while delivering the kind of machine tooled jump scares that modern audiences go to the movies for.

IT stars Jordan Lieberher as Bill, the ringleader of a group of friends who are often picked on and lean on each other for support. Bill’s friends include Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), Richie (Finn Wolfhard), and Stanley (Wyatt Oleff). Along through, the story the core group adds Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), a chubby kid who is new in town, Mikey (Chosen Jacobs), a home-schooled farm kid, and Beverly (Sophia Lillis), a young beauty who has an unwarranted reputation around the small town of Derry, Maine.

The story kicks off in 1988 when Bill’s little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) goes outside to play in the rain and goes missing at the hands of the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). In a scene that is actually quite shocking for modern horror film, Georgie’s disappearance sets a tone of fear and dread that director Andy Muschietti, a first-time feature director, does a tremendous job of maintaining over the course of the film’s two hour and fifteen-minute running time. The scene is legit frightening and Pennywise "The Dancing Clown” could not get a better or creepier introduction.

Naturally, the story from there is our group of young heroes battling Pennywise and trying to stay alive, but much like Stephen King’s book, director Muschietti and screenwriters Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga, who was going to direct the film before dropping out, do an exceptional job of introducing each of the kids’ obstacles and fears. While these scenes played like filler in the 1990 mini-series, because it’s TV and there are things you can’t do on TV, the movie is filled with genuine horrors and traumas these kids must overcome and that Pennywise uses to great advantage.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Horror in the 90s Misery

Misery (1993) 

Directed by Rob Reiner 

Written by William Goldman 

Starring James Caan, Kathy Bates 

Release Date November 30th, 1990 

Box Office $61.3 million 

The first images seen on screen in Misery are utterly meaningless. A Lucky Strike cigarette, unlit, an empty champagne glass, and a bottle of Champagne. Visually, you can read into this a celebration about to occur. Indeed, the subject of Misery, writer Paul Sheldon, played by James Caan, is about to finishing typing the final words of his final novel featuring the character Misery Chastain. Paul has decided to end his highly successful franchise and the opening visuals of the movie are an indication of the celebratory nature of this decision. 

But what do these images foreshadow for the remainder of the story? Nothing really. Paul Sheldon will soon be involved in a car wreck. He will be rescued by someone who just happens to be 'his biggest fan.' Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), the fan, finds his novel and is none too pleased to find that her favorite book character is being killed off. Thus, she sets to set the author straight. She will hold him captive and torture him in order to get him to write a different, happier book, one more fitting her vision of Misery Chastain as her favorite book character. 

In the context of a novel, it's very clear that Stephen King is commenting upon the fickle nature of readers and their relationship to authors. King, whether he openly acknowledged it or not, was truly writing about having been pigeonholed and seemingly forced to write to the tastes of his readers rather than to what spoke to him as an author and artist. That subtext is underlined in the novel form. As a movie, it doesn't resonate quite as much. We can get a sense of the commentary occurring, but this is a movie, not a novel, moreover it's an adaptation of Stephen King and not King himself sub textually crying out at his audience to let him choose his subjects. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media