"Cujo" is based on one of Stephen King’s early novels. I haven’t read the book but I can safely say that the movie probably doesn’t live up to it.

First off, I’m all for character development but this puppy just dragged a little bit too much for my liking. It takes like an hour to finally get going! What made it even more painful to watch was that I had trouble caring about the characters themselves and their journey. I couldn’t sympathize with the cheating wife (Wallace Stone), the whiny kid (Pintauro), the pushover husband (Hugh Kelly) or Donna’s lover (Stone) who looks like he has cheese on his balls (puke). I wanted them all to become “Scooby-Snacks” and therefore the first hour of the flick didn’t mean much to me.

The film also failed me on a story level. For example, I hated the way Steve’s (Stone) character arc ended (he’s spoken about). He deserved a worse fate and we certainly deserved to see him chewed to “Kibbles 'n Bits”! Another no-no would have to be the dumb-arse character decisions. Like locking a screen door to keep a rabid dog out (smart move, Einstein) or finding your dead friend and instead of going straight for the gun, you wander around looking for a damn phone. But my fav stupid move was having Donna NOT shoot the dog once he was finally down. I know, I know… the killer always has to come back for seconds (that slasher rule applies to canines too, I guess) but it made the heroine look like a really dumb beeyatch.  

On a positive note, the film’s polished directing and its last half-hour made it kind of worthwhile. Lewis Teague captures the rural surroundings with a penchant towards atmosphere and makes the final thirty minutes pretty exhilarating. There’s nothing like seeing a psycho St-Bernard slam his head against a car door in rage to get my blood pumping. I also dug the themes which the movie brought up (which I hear are more prominent in the book). The first being that some nightmares do come true and the second being karma; where even though we atone for our sins, they still come back to bite us in the ass. In Donna’s case, she shouldn’t have cheated on her boy with the town’s “man-whore” and her punishment for that is having a rabid pooch hunting her down. Kind of liked that angle.

Five St-Bernards were used for the film. They also used a mechanical head and a dude in a dog suit.

Cujo is an ancient Indian term that means: unstoppable force.

Stephen King had a drug/alcohol problem at the time that he wrote "Cujo". I read in a few interviews that he doesn’t remember writing the book.