A Boy and His Dog

Nasty wasteland yarn from Sam Peckinpah regular L Q Jones. Based on a Harlan Ellison short story, A Boy and His Dog tracks the titular Vic and Blood's rad-zone escapades. In the aftermath of the fourth world war, civilisation has been reduced to bare spots of porno reeling shanty towns in a sea of endless desert. Hot commodities include tinned fruit, popcorn, and women. To this end, telepathic canine Blood assists his dopey master Vic in the hunt for the latter, in exchange for either of the former. Despite being the nominal hero, Vic's intentions are just as violent and debased as those of the roaming rape-gangs. Procreational urges are whittled down to the basest action, the intellectual Blood-hound sneering at the revolting humans. Vic is such a stud that he is noticed by the impotent masters of an underground overclass, desperate for offspring. Lured into a perpetual pancake-faced Protestant parade, Vic finds himself hooked up to a milking machine. It's not the life he wanted. A Boy and His Dog is a rather callous film, that never patronises the posited post-nuclear misery. Daily life a sequence of survivalist decision making, that places subsistence at a premium.