t's 2024, and the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was once Phoenix, Arizona, is prowled by unruly gangs and lone scavengers like 18-year-old Vic (Johnson). Society has vanished, either underground or over the hills, and women have been degraded to the level of food: something to be hunted and consumed.
Vic travels with a dog called Blood (voiced by Tim McIntire), who's not only telepathic but rational enough to view Vic's libido-driven behavior with disdain. Nonetheless, they work as a team: Vic hunts food, and Blood locates women using a kind of psychic radar. When Blood senses a disguised female in "town," they follow her to a deserted gymnasium, normally home to strange and deadly mutants. There Vic starts to force himself on her--only to be disarmed by her demure independence. Before he can figure her out, however, a gang descends on them. Blood is wounded in the ensuing fight, but the mutants return, and the three have to hide.
While they wait, Quilla June (Benton) almost convinces Vic to return underground with her, where American society has been preserved. But Blood can't come, and Vic won't go without him. So she conks him on the head and takes off, knowing he'll be driven to follow.
Blood promises to wait as long as he can while Vic descends into a bizarrely homespun totalitarian community under the iron fist of the Committee, led by Craddock (Robards). Recipes for blue-ribbon pie and gentle warnings about conformity alternate on the ubiquitous loudspeakers. Vic learns Quilla June lured him down to stud their women, underground life having thinned their seed; Vic is first overjoyed, then horrified as they laugh in his face and then strap him into a sexual milking machine. The ambitious Quilla June rescues Vic for her own ends, bringing on a test of wills between Quilla June, Vic and the Committee.
"Normal" is relative
There are two reasons that A Boy and His Dog works. The first is tone: The film's dark, edgy satire is refreshingly dry, the product of innovative science fiction thinker Harlan Ellison--who wrote the story on which it's based--and L.Q. Jones's screenplay and direction. The film is enchantingly devoid of both sentimentality and didacticism, a pleasant surprise in any work of SF featuring a ravaged future. Instead, A Boy and His Dog juxtaposes the desolate, rubble-strewn surface, where the only culture left to the survivors is badly worn copies of old sex films, and the surreal, silent-majority underground, a dark dreamscape of picnics, marching bands, and a burly enforcer with a permanent smile. Which world is stranger?
The film's other secret is the crucial rapport between Vic and Blood. Johnson immerses himself in the role, creating a footloose, free-thinking adventurer with more to him than a scruffy exterior. A serendipitous mixture of McIntire's wry voice and a carefully directed animal makes Blood as real as any of the humans he meets, and the friendship between man and dog is as well crafted as any screen relationship.
There are a number of delightful moments in the film: for example, Blood's patient review of American history with his less-than-apt pupil, Vic, or the bizarre wedding ceremonies, with Vic an unwilling participant. No moment, however, surpasses the perfect--and perfectly twisted--ending.
Ellison has been adapted less successfully; most famously he nearly took his name off of "City on the Edge of Forever," Star Trek's finest hour. But Ellison reportedly stated that A Boy and His Dog, a Hugo-winning film based on his Nebula-winning novella, is one of the best adaptations of his work. His approval underscores the way in which everything about this film works together to create something entertaining, provocative and decidedly out of the ordinary.
