Hacker Cinema
A Boy and His Dog
1975 · Film · 91 min
Directed by L.Q. Jones
Set in the year 2024 in post-apocalyptic America, 18-year old Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood, are scavengers in the desolate wilderness ravaged by World War IV, where survivors must battle for food and shelter in the desert-like wasteland. Vic and Blood eke out a meager existence, foraging for food and fighting gangs of cutthroats.
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10 comments on Hacker News
Yeah, Star Wars more or less killed sci-fi as we had known it. I liked the weird Logan's Run, the depiction of class stratification in "Soylent Green", the banality of corporate control of "Rollerball".
The idea of a computer virus in the film "Westworld" was, to me at the time, something out of left field. (And speaking of Michael Crichton, "The Andromeda Strain" was "intelligent" sci-fi and we enjoyed it.)
"Mad Max", though it came after "Star Wars", drew inspiration from "A Boy and His Dog", "Deathrace 2000"…
A Golden Age for sure.
Mad Max, obviously, Night of the Comet, The Quiet Earth, A boy and his dog. I think the early 80s was a good time for the genre.
Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and that other Charleton Heston movie with zombies that I can’t remember (not a huge fan of zombies)
The Road is a fairly recent movie that fits.
British TV had Space 1999, lots of early Doctor Who and an attempt at the Tripods series by John Christopher. By far my favorite was “Survivors” written by Terry Nation - who needs zombies when you’ve got actual problems to deal with!
...which was written by author Harlan Ellison, also notable for the Star Trek (TOS) episode known as "The City on the Edge of Forever."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_and_His_Dog
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Forever
Until you hit Zardoz or A Boy and His Dog, these are relatively tame. If you want the deeply weird, you should head for Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death or Invasion of the Bee Girls. For some reason, once the films got a little smutty, they also got rather experimental. I'm not saying they are good but they are unusual and you may find yourself mulling over what you saw more than you might expect. It's not dissimilar to a slightly earlier deal where some of the porn people were trying to move toward horror and some of the horror people were trying to have more of an exploitative feel (arguably the former group had less success than the latter). Again, the results weren't really good but they were sometimes interesting.
"2010: The Year We Make Contact" is a much more accessible movie that holds up pretty well. It also feels like a payoff after investing so much time being confused/bored by 2001.
I was 11 when "Logan's Run" came out. Yes it's kinda loaded with 70's sex tropes for the first act, but it's also equal parts goofy and a really good film.
The original "The Day The Earth Stood Still" holds up.
"A Boy and His Dog" is a bit crude here and there, but might resonate with a 12yo.
"Quatermass and the Pit" (aka "Five Million Years to Earth") is both intense and fairly tame.
A lot of old TV series hold up - Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, UFO, Space 1999, Star Trek TOS, etc all have some excellent episodes.
I absolutely love "Dark City" and "12 Monkeys" but I'm not sure they'd have held my interest at 12.
Doctor Who, both old and new are excellent. Though I'm partial to the Tom Baker era.
The Stargate franchise is pretty good.
"Moon" (2009) is a bit cerebral but a good SF story.
I don't think you remake excellent movies like "Dog Day Afternoon", you remake the bad ones, usually B-movies, that showed potential. Maybe revisit "A Boy and His Dog", for example.
I tend to mischievously misapply the word "Challenging" to movies I think shouldn't have been made because they expose the bigotry of their audience.
Like all the Taken movies, or A Boy And His Dog, or anything Steven Seagal made after he discovered Russian money.
When I was a teenager, I probably would have dug violent vigilantism (like I enjoyed "Mad Max" when it came out at that time). My own art back then reflected a cynical, dark, post-apocalyptic future (likely inspired by films like "A Boy and His Dog" as an example).
Story time: in those days the "copy shops" were ma and pa (the way the original video rental stores were) and the nearest copy shop where I took some of my art to be "Xeroxed" was, apparently, run by a born-again Christian.
When I picked up my art he felt I needed a preachin' to. "Why spend your talents making the world a darker place?" Why not make positive art?" (Or something along those lines. I think "glory of God" was in there too and was in fact the tell.)
I thought at the time how boring that would be, how "non-cool", "non-art" that was. I laughed it off.
Three decades later I can begin to appreciate his disappointment in younger me. The world events since (and since I got older and started paying attention) have informed me that indeed there is already too many horrific (real) things in the world.
Older me now just can't enjoy, for example, a Quentin Tarantino film (no doubt teen me would have loved it though).
I have no interest in Frank Miller. I don't want to live in his world, don't care even to look at it.
A Boy And His Dog (1975)
Very good for a shoestring budget movie. One of main influences for Fallout and Wasteland. A bit politically incorrect and you may find it offensive.
> You can't assume the government is gone, BTW ...
Right. It'll be some mix of police, ex-military and professional criminals.
Edit: Reminds me of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog. The film adaptation was OK too.