Don Johnson was one of the coolest actors of his generation. During the 1980s, he became a cultural icon thanks to the role of Crocket in Miami Vice. Whilst he’s gone on to make a number of films and TV shows, nothing has really come close to matching its success. However, he seems to have been gifted a second wind in his autumn years, cast in number of roles by pulp filmmakers. Back in the 1970s, one of his first films was A Boy and His Dog.
World War IV lasted five days. In the post-apocalyptic wasteland of south-western America, a teenager (Vic – Johnson) and his genetically-modified dog Blood (Tim McIntire) work as a team. They can communicate and have an agreement. In exchange for providing him food, his canine chum uses his nose to sniff out women for the randy young man. In a shanty town, they discover a potential victim (Susanne Benton), but she’s not as helpless as he believes.
Based on a popular novella by Harlan Ellison, A Boy and His Dog is an acerbic dark sci-fi comedy which plays with a number of ideas about society. While L.Q. Jones’ drama is bleak in many respects, it treats its nightmarish future world with a great deal of humour. Creating a neo-1950s underground world could be argued as prescient given the current state of the US. A Boy and His Dog is daft by design but it’s also well-written and full of interesting angles.
Special features:
- Newly Restored High Definition Transfer
- In Conversation: Harlan Ellison & L.Q. Jones
- Commentary by Director L.Q. Jones, John Arthur Morrill, and Charles Champlin
- English Subtitles
A Boy and His Dog is released on Blu-ray by 101 Films on 17 October.
