On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in film history.
First, the BAIT: a weird genre pick and why we’re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult classic actually worth recommending?”
The Bait: No Food? No Females? No Shit.
There’s a feminist interpretation of “A Boy and His Dog” lurking somewhere inside this divisive black comedy from 1975. But I might be just a little too depressed to find it.
No worries! We can still flop on the couch, stream it for free, and let the maybe-misunderstood, anti-fascist cult classic — about a brutish scavenger named Vic (Don Johnson) and his psychic dog named Blood (voiced by Tim McIntire) — smother us both like a hug in a heatwave.
This summer in the U.S. has been hard. Not “roam a post-apocalyptic wasteland searching for humanity” hard, but challenging all the same. 50 years ago, actor L.Q. Jones raised $400,000 to direct an adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s “A Boy and His Dog.” It’s a twisted collection of stories about an authoritarian regime combining elements of the buddy adventure with a fiercely perverse and yet staunchly anti-sex nightmare. Jones had trouble getting support from studios back then, but the project’s themes feel fresh now.
“Eisenhower… Truman… Kennedy…”
We meet Vic and Blood ambling through the desert. It’s 2024 A.D. but Brat Summer is nowhere in sight. The companions rely on each other in a world consumed by conspiracy, corruption, and nuclear panic. Bandits, raiders, and more monsters crawl the barren landscape. Charismatic psychos on chariots instantly give away “A Boy and His Dog” as inspiration for “Mad Max” (George Miller has said as much) — but the role it played in shaping the backwards Americana of “Fallout” shines even brighter.
“Johnson… Nixon… Ford… Kennedy… Kennedy… Kennedy…”
Quizzed by his canine companion, Vic recites former U.S. presidents to recall the country’s sordid history. From 1950 to 1983, World War III lasted decades, but World War IV ended in a matter of days? Yikes. Born in the real 2006, Vic would’ve entered an America launching Twitter, discovering Taylor Swift, transporting Saddam Hussein, and reclassifying Pluto as a dwarf.
But here? Here, he’s an evil 18-year-old facing a hopeless future in a cesspool formerly known as Phoenix, Arizona. (He would have voted for Trump either way, but one sounds better.)
The deal between dog and deadbeat? Vic feeds Blood and Blood sniffs out women for Vic to rape. “No Food. No Females.” That’s the arrangement. It’s a sickening setup but the filmmaker isn’t shy. Jangly keys play under the title card setting up a bizarre collision that feels like a kind of complicit intimacy.
“You’re not a nice person, Albert,” Blood chides. He’s sardonic amid the sexual violence. “You’re not a nice person at all.”
He’s mocking Vic with a literary reference, although that isn’t clear in the movie. As Ellison explains in the novella, Albert Payson Terhune was famous for writing feel-good books about his beloved collies. “A Boy and His Dog” sees Blood repeatedly punish Vic for his friendship in a semi-antagonistic relationship that feels toxically male and codependent in a “Wilfred” way. Blood is smarter than his human, but their power struggle is punctuated with frat boy insults, like “fuzzy butt” and “dog meat,” on both sides.
Enter Quilla June (Susanne Benton). She’s a beautiful woman who wins Vic’s heart in the middle of a would-be attack. He beams, “I’m the one who’s supposed to want to do it!” — a political parallel so on the nose of the current culture wars it might as well be the face mask on a science denier’s chin.
Will Quilla finally drive Blood and Vic apart? Or will “A Boy and His Dog” escape the tyranny of a [gasp] horny human woman alive?! Sink into the bad summer vibes and find out on Tubi. (Yeah, yeah, it’s owned by Fox, but the service free. So, free pass for everyone. I’m not dealing with that either.)
“A Boy and His Dog” is now streaming on Tubi.
The Bite: Is That the Pernicious Normalization of Violence Against Women — or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
Wow, I lied. The feminist read of “A Boy and His Dog” was basically staring me in the face; I just had to believe in myself. Ha! Fucking women. Am I right?
You can’t trust what a filmmaker “intended” any more than you can believe a man who “didn’t mean” to say the things he literally just chose to say. That said, the negative reputation surrounding the last lines in Jones’ thorny adaptation — a punch-up from Ellison’s original text that’s meaner and more sexist, no doubt — seems outsized. The author didn’t like it, and that’s fair enough. But the suggestion that Jones was mocking the tragic fate of his complex female protagonist lacks the nuance of hindsight.
Shortly after “A Boy and His Dog” came out, feminist writer Joanna Russ penned a visceral takedown of the adaptation. Borrowing from Kate Millett’s critique of Norman Mailer’s “An American Dream,” she summarized the film as being “about how to feed your girlfriend to your dog and live happily ever after.” If you watched the movie, then you know that is what happens…. but there’s more to it than that.
Left to survive above ground on his own, Blood is almost dead when Vic and Quilla finally come back for him. The narrative mechanism that cues up that finale is weak in Ellison’s telling too. (Just make Blood a robot dog who has to be charged or something? It makes no sense why he can’t hunt for himself?) But “It’s me or the dog!” still works as an emotional ultimatum — even if the outcome for Quilla and man’s best friend should be reversed.
“She said she loved me,” Vic coos, his late ex still stuck between Blood’s teeth. “Hell, it wasn’t my fault she chose me to get all wet-brained over.“
“Well, I’d say she certainly had marvelous judgement, Albert.” The dog pauses for the pun.
“If not particularly good taste.“
The two walk into the sunset, laughing as the credits roll. It’s a brutal tweak from Ellison’s novel, which aims for a softer landing and evokes a stronger sense of mourning for Quilla. The original story reads, “It took a long time before I stopped hearing her calling in my head. Asking me, asking me, ‘Do you know what love is?’ Sure I know. A boy loves his dog.”
Russ wasn’t wrong to point out the cruelty of Jones’ ending — but Ellison’s version aims to give both Quilla and Vic a level of empathy that feels more contentious in 2025. Vic’s decision to murder his girlfriend for dog chow instead of stopping by a dystopian Petsmart is inarguably inhuman. Awarding his character the poetry of remorse undercuts Vic’s arc as an animal that Quilla only thought was capable of love. That might not feel good to process, but you can take solace knowing countless single women have dealt with that sort of realization in therapy before.
Looking back at the rest of Jones’ film, it’s imperfect reimagining that’s more pro-woman than you’d think. The unnatural grin of the authoritarian underworld Quilla drags Vic into (which I think we can all agree resembles a certain somebody’s wildly under-attended military birthday party) offends and attacks them both. So, they have to team up. Forced to sit on an old dude’s lap dressed like Loonette the Clown, Quilla’s heart leads her to seek out a method of rebellion. But told his semen will be used to artificially inseminate women before he’s killed at a labor camp? That sends Vic’s authentic self running back to Blood and the pursuit of a utopia neither deserves to find.
The news is bad right now. Gender equality has been set back in the U.S. significantly, and around the world, women and girls face challenges many countries haven’t dealt with in years. On nights like this, I like to cuddle my cats close and imagine them playfully filleting the deplorable men I used to date. Moving forward, I’ll also be getting a morale boost from the best line in “A Boy and His Dog.” It’s a banger from Quilla, delivered while Vic is stomping around… demanding to fight a can of beans of something? Whatever. He’s not important.
“I didn’t bring you down here so they could use you,” she snaps, rage streaming from her eyes. “I brought you down here so I could use you.” Amen, bitch. But also? Woof.
IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations late-night on weekends. Read more of our deranged recommendations and filmmaker interviews…
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