Cujo (1983 movie, 1981 novel)

Years ago, while perusing a used book store in Yucaipa, I procured a well-loved 1st edition copy of Cujo. At the time, I was the custodian of a kind and gentle soul named Paris, who happened to be a Saint Bernard. The plot of Cujo is very well-known, in crude summary a woman and child are trapped by a rabid Saint Bernard for a few days in her broken-down Pinto.

Paris patiently awaiting some ham

My sister has never been a big fan of Stephen King; she can't stand his penchant for placing children in peril (or simply offing them in violent ways). I don't care much for children and therefore don't hold this against King, but I did notice the common thread after she pointed it out. Case in point, it isn't every day you get to watch a little league team get decimated by an automatic pitching machine and a steam roller (Maximum Overdrive, bless your heart, even if King himself thinks you were foolish).

Anyway, despite my vague appreciation for King, I just couldn't bring myself to read or watch Cujo for years. I like dogs too much, I loved Paris, and didn't want to have to see or read anything happen to poor Cujo. I'd seen clips on tv as a kid, and knew the plot; I didn't see how things could play out in a way that wouldn't cause me distress (don't tell me it's only a movie, if you like seeing animals suffer you're off). Is it wrong that I can watch little Gage get pancaked (or at least the implication that he gets pancaked) circa Pet Sematary, but I just didn't have the will to see Cujo lose his mind?

This all changed on the eve of a four day weekend, when I finally dug out the novel. It is short in comparison to some of King's works, so it only took me an afternoon to get through it. My fears were realized; the novel at times tells things from Cujo's perspective. The poor guy just wants to be a good dog, and yet he is sick, and slowly goes mad. It was painful to read his last encounter with his human boy: "The last of the dog that had been before the bat scratched its nose turned away, and the sick and dangerous dog, subverted for the last time, was forced to turn with it." "He broke into a lumbering run, hoping to outrun the sickness, but it ran with him, buzzing and yammering, making him ache with hatred and murder." There are also times when Cujo laments his intense hunger and thirst, which he cannot remedy due to his disgust and hatred for food and water, and how he would kill sounds and smells if he could.

The novel shows us from Cujo's eyes his growing agony and madness, and we see him look to those around him for the source of his pain. Through his confused thoughts, we see Cujo try and make sense of budding feelings to hurt people, which culminates in the intense battle between Cujo and Donna (Dee Wallace, who I kept picturing from her role in The Howling); he is sure she is responsible for his misery and wants to destroy her. Donna in turn feels the dog is pure evil, truly looking inside of her.

In reading the book, I found myself almost rooting for Cujo; I knew he was beyond repair, but it was difficult to accept that he had to die. The point that he was a really good boy is driven home throughout the book (with a nice final nail in the coffin in the end, when we are reminded again), and he truly doesn't understand what has happened to him.


King's work hashes out very thoroughly just about every character in the book; conversely, the movie is very truncated. It's cliché to say this, but I felt the book was superior to the movie. Obviously some modifications must be made for the sake of run-time, but the story was modified in large ways. With the novel, we can justify the behaviors of most of the characters, and understand their motives. In the movie, I found myself feeling sorry for no one; none of the human characters were really given any redeeming qualities or explanation. Donna is an adulterer in both story-lines; in the novel, however, we know her thinking, as well as the husband's. In the movie, she's just a hussy; granted, she breaks it off with her lover, but we don't get much of a why beyond a flippant "Oh, my husband's actually a nice guy." The result is that I ended up hoping she'd die, along with the insanely annoying "Tad" child.

In the book, the "other man" plays a critical role in delaying the police locating Donna (albeit unintentionally). In the movie, it was almost as if his antics were included as an afterthought, as they were very glossed over.

One change in the movie, the decision to greatly truncate the story-line of Cujo's family (the Cambers, although I love Ed Lauter), seemed to make sense; it was much-ado in the book, when really we just needed to know that by a series of coincidences 2/3 of Cujo's people would be out of town. In addition, the glaring omission from the movie of the Frank Dodd (from Stephen King's other novel, The Dead Zone) background we get in the novel made me realize it actually felt somewhat hurried in the book. We get a lot of build-up in the beginning, but he's really just a phantom at the back of the minds of some of the Old Timers. It was a good concept though, and gave those characters another level of fear to work through. King likes to allude to evil as a common theme in his works, a monster that never dies. At least in the novel, the reader gets to decide if Cujo is just rabid, or if there is a bit of Frank Dodd afoot. This includes the incidents with Tad and his closet in the beginning of the novel.

The movie's ending was extremely disappointing for me, and felt much more rushed than that of the novel. King did right by Cujo (if not the poor bunny) in the novel's final notes, while the movie leaves you feeling he was wretched. I probably should say this more often, but, spoiler alert: the little abomination of a child gets a reprieve in the end of the movie despite being a dreadful character the whole time. Oh, and no Stephen King cameo.

 I had to hit the Googles to find out what King himself thought of Cujo: apparently he was at the height of his alcoholism when he wrote it and doesn't remember much. Cujo truly is a tragedy; where the movie fails in portraying this, the novel excels in presenting the downfall of a gentle giant, and it is agonizing to watch his dog mind try to make sense of what is happening to him.