TIL: "A Boy and His Dog" (1975) was a little cult movie with BIG cultural impact. Fallout games, Mad Max, others
TIL: "A Boy and His Dog" (1975) was a little cult movie with BIG cultural impact. Fallout games, Mad Max, others
Many "Fallout" fans still don't know that the franchise was partially inspired by Harlan Ellison's short story "A Boy and His Dog."
In 1969, he wrote a short story titled “A Boy and His Dog,” which tells the tale of a 15-year-old wasteland scavenger named Vic and his telepathic dog Blood. The story was also adapted into a 1975 film, which Fallout designer Jesse Heinig told The Escapist in 2009 "inspired Fallout on many levels" (including Dogmeat's name, which was taken from a nickname Vic gives Blood in the film).
It also influenced "Love and Monsters" (2020)
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/lq-jones-on-a-boy-and-his-dog-the-rt-interview/
And Mad Max.
Oh, and the dog is the same dog that was "Tiger" on "The Brady Bunch"
The ending of A Boy and his Dog is what brings everything together in kind of a punchline sort of way. People that said they could not watch very long need to watch it in its entirety to appreciate the movie as a whole.
Is it a great movie? Hell no, but it is an interesting and slightly thought-provoking movie.
Who knows what future awaits us after society goes to shit. Survival would be number one. Think about what happened in 28 Days Later, or how social norms quickly break down in The Mist.
I’m tired and I hope I was succinct enough.
Tried to watch it, the casual attitude towards rape turned me off.
Literally at the beginning, same
They made an unwatchably-bad movie based on this, too, with Don Johnson. I tried to watch it a month or so ago, and the acting, pacing, and set-work was so cringey I only made it a few minutes in before noping out. (I only skimmed the interview, but it sounds like they intended it to be bad?)
unwatchably-bad movie
Beg to differ, it's bad, but in the novel "so bad it rounded the bend back to good" variety. Perfect riffing fodder, a la MST3K.
I tried, I really did. It just made me uncomfortably bored. (Which from someone who's rewatched every MST3K I could get my hands on a dozen or so times each, is saying something. :)
I love bad movies as well. This one was too far over the line for me, I just wasn't interested in its specific brand of "meh". (Admittedly I have never read the book, and have never heard anything good about this author before, despite reading a ton of sc-fi. Maybe you need to know the author to enjoy it?)
My friend and I are B-movie afficionados. A Boy and His Dog is a long time favorite of ours, going back to the original Fallout days.
He recently bought and sent me this amazing knockoff poster with a bunch of weird shit that isn't even in the movie:
(The name of the gallery, Deadly Prey, is a reference to another fine B-movie masterpiece.)
I had watched it before, and I watched it with my adult son last night.
It holds up. Good times