It was 1983 when Stephen King officially became his own cinematic subgenre. Sure, there had been adaptations of his books throughout the previous half-decade, including such high-profile films as Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), and George A. Romero’s Creepshow (1982), which was based on an original King screenplay. But, each of those films had been separated by at least a year. And then comes 1983, and we get not one, not two, but three Stephen King adaptations all in the same year: John Carpenter’s Christine, David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, and Lewis Teague’s Cujo.

Of those three films, Cujo is arguably the least ambitious, mostly because it was based on one of King’s least ambitious—although decidedly darkest—novels (and one that he has said in his book On Writing that he barely remembers penning since he was at the height of his alcohol and cocaine addiction at that time). Cujo is really more of a novella that was padded out to novel length with some boiler-plate domestic melodrama involving an extramarital affair. The padding shows in the film, as well, despite clear attempts to integrate it into the horrors of the main plot, which involves a mother and her young son trapped inside a small, sun-baked car on a remote farm with a rabid St. Bernard trying to get inside. The rabid dog sequences are so well done that it is easy to forgive how trivial and forgettable the drama surrounding it really is. The mother, Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace), is married to Vic (Daniel Hugh Kelly), a handsome and successful marketing executive whose career is on edge due to a scandal involving one of his products, a popular kids cereal, causing consumers to think they have internal bleeding. Donna is having an affair with Steve Kemp (Christopher Stone), a local handyman and tennis buddy of Vic’s. Donna is wracked with guilt, though, and wants to end it, which she does, but not before Vic figures out what is going on.

In a case of particularly bad timing, Vic has to leave on a business trip to deal with the breakfast cereal debacle, and it is during this time that Donna and their 6-year-old son Tad (Danny Pintauro) take her rambling Ford Pinto up to a farm owned by Joe Camber (Ed Lauter), who also does auto repairs. Camber is the owner of the titular dog, who we meet in the film’s opening credits sequence as a big, lumbering, lovable hound chasing a rabbit across an open field. Unfortunately, Cujo makes the mistake of sticking his head inside a hole, which gets his snout bitten by a rabid bat. Cujo slowly succumbs to the rabies, unbeknownst to Joe, his harried, abused wife Charity (Kaiulani Lee), and their teenage son Brett (Billy Jacoby). By the time poor Donna and Tad arrive at the farm, Cujo has mauled Joe to death and Charity and Brett are out of town, leaving them stranded when the Pinto’s engine dies.

The film’s third act deals almost entirely with Donna and Tad’s increasingly desperate ordeal trapped inside the Pinto while Cujo, who is by now a blood-, mud-, and saliva-streaked monstrosity, does everything in his deranged power to get inside, which often involves slamming his body into the doors, trying to reach through the windows, and biting and clawing at the windshield (Cujo is played by at least six different dogs—the number differs depending on who is asked—a man in a full-size dog suit, and an animatronic dog head, all of which cuts together seamlessly in the film). Part of the effectiveness of this scenario is the horrific frustration of their entrapment mere feet from the potential safety of the farmhouse. This being the era before cell phones, all Donna can do it try to keep Cujo at bay and herself and Tad alive in the brutal summer heat while waiting for someone else to arrive.

Director Lewis Teague, who at that point was the least well-known filmmaker to tackle a King adaptation, was a jack of all trades, having helmed episodes of a half-dozen different television series throughout the 1960s and ’70s, as well as several low-budget films, including the Roger Corman-produced gangster drama The Lady in Red (1979), the alligators-in-the-sewer horror film Alligator (1980), and the Death Wish knock-off Fighting Back (1982). None of these films is particularly distinguished, but they are all entertaining in their own right, which pretty much describes Cujo. Although hardly a masterpiece of horror-suspense, it works when it needs to, creating a gradually escalating sense of dread and tension as Donna and Tad’s situation becomes more and more dire. The raw performances by Danny Pintauro, who later became best known for the sitcom Who’s the Boss?, and Dee Wallace are key here, as they effectively embody abject terror and desperation, respectively. Wallace, who had previously had major roles in The Howling (1981) and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), is particularly good at conveying Donna’s mix of strategy and anguish, and she has the good fortune of never having to do anything particularly stupid. The real horror of Cujo, like a lot of such films, is that of a parent faced with the seemingly impossible task of protecting their child in a horrendous scenario, which makes the film’s surrounding melodrama feel that much more superfluous.

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