A Boy and His Dog

When Harlan Ellison passed a few weeks ago, I realized I have never read of his stuff (although I did see him on a panel at a comic book convention years ago, and he used very vivid language). I have seen a film based on his work, A Boy and His Dog. I first saw it back in college, and remember liking it. But I watched it again last night and it's horrible.

The film, released in 1975, was written and directed by L.Q. Jones, who appears to incapable of directing any kind of scene in a coherent way. The script's strengths are probably Ellison's, and most of the good lines come from a dog.

It's the year 2024 (lord, we're almost there). After World War IV, the world is a desolate landscape. Our hero, Don Johnson, travels the land looking for food and sex. He has a dog, Blood, who can speak telepathically to him. Blood has lost his ability to hunt, but can smell a female like a shark can smell blood. This arrangement suits them both, although Blood has a sarcastic personality.

Johnson finds himself a woman (Suzanne Benton), whom he wants to rape (there is no seduction--it's a fairly misogynistic story). She leads him to "down under," which turns out to be a twisted version of pre-war America, with marching bands and canning peaches. The residents wear white face, and are run by a fascist committee (including Jason Robards, much too good an actor for this). They want Johnson as a sperm donor, but instead of getting to have sex, they hook up to a milking machine.

I suppose this was an early example of the now ubiquitous post-apocalyptic dystopia film, and the ideas are good, but the execution is sloppy. The movie is only 90 minutes long but includes long scenes of nothing going on. Johnson visits an outdoor movie theater where old stag films are shown, and that goes on forever.

Johnson is terrible, and Benton isn't much better. As I mentioned, the dog has all the good lines, such as when Johnson and Benton start to have sex for the second time, he quotes Shakespeare: "Once more into the breach."

In a DVD conversation between Jones and Ellison, Jones mentions that some critics have called A Boy and His Dog the best science fiction film ever made. I'd like to meet those critics, who somehow think this piece of tripe is better than Star Wars or 2001 or Blade Runner or any of another 100 sci-fi films that are much better.