If there was ever a science fiction writer that could be considered ‘underrated’, I guess that title would go to Harlan Ellison. This is an author with dozens and dozens of credits to his name after all, a contemporary of such literary giants as Ray Bradbury, Philip Jose Farmer and Larry Niven, and editor of some of the best anthologies of the genre (“Dangerous Visions” and its sequel), and yet it seems like you never see the same amount of praise given to Ellison as you do for Bradbury and those others. Was it his irascible personality that is to blame? His unwillingness to take shit from people and jump through the hoops of acceptance that has lead to his cold reception in modern times? I can’t say for certain, but I’m sure Ellison doesn’t really give a shit.
While Ellison has been fairly successful in the world of television, having written for The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and several other series, the same can’t be said for the world of film. Unless you count the time James Cameron plagiarized him, that is. Whether you attribute it to his infamously abrasive personality making studio’s unwilling to work with him, or his distaste for the Hollywood system making him unwilling to work with them, but you just don’t see many Ellison works make it off the printed page (which might also be a part of why he’s become relatively obscure, actually). In fact there’s only one movie that I know of that is a direct adaptation of one of Harlan Ellison’s work, 1975’s A Boy and His Dog, based on the 1969 novella by the same name. The fact that it is the only one may or may not be a warning sign.
The year is 2024. In the wake of World War IV, the major cities of the world have been turned to ashes, destroyed by waves of atomic fire. Humanity, or at least what’s left of it, struggle to survive in the harsh, unforgiving desert that the world has become. Some fall together into tribes of a sort, struggling to survive off of canned food and what little foraging there is to be. Others become raiders, using guns and violence to take whatever it is they want, whether it’s food, women or plain ol’ regular power. Some people just become a sort of postmodern nomad, getting food where they can, killing when they need to, and living lives free of the trappings and social mores that once made up civilization as we know.
In the dusty ruins that was once the American Southwest, a boy (Vic, otherwise known as Albert, as vulgar and sex-crazed as any other teenager his age) and his dog (Blood, who just so happens to be telepathic and incredibly intelligent, especially about history prior to the war)are two such nomads, hunting down food and women and searching for that patch of unspoiled paradise that always seem to exist in these post-apocalyptic scenarios. Sometimes getting exactly what you want isn’t always the best thing however, and when Vic and Blood actually end up tracking down a woman, it sets off a chain of events that could end up being very unpleasant for everyone involved. As if it wasn’t unpleasant enough as it is.
As interesting as parts of A Boy and His Dog are, the scenes with the underground society for example, it doesn’t really change the fact that as a whole it’s just kind of boring. I don’t know how it was in the original novella, I’m sure it works out fine, but in visual form you’re getting a lot of movie where there’s just nothing really going on. What are we really getting out of the ‘Vic and Blood watch raiders dig a hole’ scene? Or the ‘Vic watches vintage porno for 10 minutes’ sequence. Was the director afraid he didn’t have enough material to work with or something, so he decided to stretch things out as much as possible? I mean, the movie isn’t exactly as action-packed or as violent as you’d expect a post-apocalyptic America to be, at least not until the end, so maybe the hope was to push the movie based on the setting and the message, rather than what actually goes on in said movie. Much like fellow cult 70s sci-film and Marathon entrant Westworld in that respect, a movie that only really gets interesting when most of it is over. A movie that was also written by a celebrated science fiction author by the by, “Jurassic Park”-creator Michael Crichton, and one that featured a killer robot much like The Terminator, which was the film that James Cameron allegedly plagiarized Harlan Ellison to create. Coincidence? Probably.
Anyway the name of the movie is A Boy and His Dog, and the titular boy and dog have some pretty good chemistry together, so in that case the movie succeeds. However, aside from the parts in the underground society, which seem almost dreamlike in the way it just shows up and fades away, I can’t really think of a reason to recommend this one. If you’re looking for some post-apocalyptic adventures, just go watch Fury Road instead. Or play some Fallout. You won’t get to see Miami Vice star Don Johnson attempt to rape a girl at gunpoint, but then you’ll probably be a lot better off.
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