It's no secret, you can count the number of really good Stephen King horror movies on the fingers of one hand, and have fingers left over to pick up a nickel. Lewis Teague's Cujo is one of 'em, and probably the least remembered. The cast is a happy cavalcade of Eighties TV stars, including Dee (ET) Wallace, Daniel Hugh (Hardcastle and McCormick) Kelly (We miss you, Stephen Cannell!), Ed (every movie that needed a creepy skinny bald guy) Lauter, and even Danny (Who's the Boss?) Pintauro as The Kid Who Really Ought To Have Died. And though the concept of the rabid St. Bernard going on a killing spree and ultimately trapping a young mother and her son in their broken car works far better in a book, where you can conjure up he images yourself, way-underestimated director Lewis Teague does a hell of a job making it work on film. Hell, even just making it non-silly would have been an accomplishment, and he goes ten steps farther than that.
The non-scary King movies, like Stand By Me, Shawshank Redepmtion, and The Green Mile have left millions of dollars and many stars in their glittering wakes (God what an awful sentence). The scary ones have almost all crashed and burned or simply been forgotten -- and most of them deservedly so (though we admit it, we liked The Mist.) Even amazing actors like George C. Scott (Firestarter), Gary Sinise and Jamey Sheridan (The Stand, 1993), and Johnny Depp and Timothy Hutton (Secret Window) couldn't help some of 'em. But Cujo, like Christine and The Dead Zone and few others, actually holds up okay. It's not a masterpiece but it's better than anything you're likely to find on Syfy this week-- or at the movie theater, for that matter. (Come on, do you really want to see another possessed kid and Renee Zelweger -- assuming you can tell the difference?)
And here, as an unexpected bonus: the theatrical trailer from (gak) twenty-seven years ago. "Terror has a new name ..." heh heh heh.
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