Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace) is a housewife who is having an affair behind the back of her workaholic husband, Vic (Daniel Hugh-Kelly) while their young son Tad (Danny Pintauro) becomes collateral damage in the marriage breakdown. As the family drama plays out, across town an old St. Bernard named Cujo is devolving into a ravenous monster after being bitten by a rabid bat. Coincidence finds Donna and Tad trapped in their broken-down car down close to the garage where Cujo lives and the pair find themselves under siege by the now vicious monster dog. Writers Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier lose some of the sub-textural nuance of Stephen King’s famous novel but manage to maintain the heart and soul of the story. King has always been a master of character and domestic small-town situations and Dunaway and Currier do well with this element of the story nicely capturing the disintegrating Trenton family dynamics and the various characters inhabiting the small town of Castle Rock. Director Lewis Teague handles this part of the film in a no-nonsense rudimentary way but really comes into his own when Cujo begins attacking mother and son in their broken-down car. At this point he quickly pivots the film from dysfunctional family drama into a tense animal attack horror. Teague uses different methods and angles to film the attacks and cleverly manages to balance elements of quiet calm before the next wild, slavering assault. Slick editing also ensures that the assaults on the car never become boring or fall into the trap of repetition. He also cleverly manages to extract a degree of tension out of the isolated garage locale. An old, lumbering St. Bernard wouldn’t appear on the face of it to make much of a monster, but its slow disintegration, some clever make-up and Teague’s approach to shooting the attacks all ensure that Cujo comes across as a reasonably credible and scary creature. From a cast perspective, the great Dee Wallace is excellent as the emotional mother, while Danny Pintauro looks genuinely terrified during the Cujo attacks. Although most of the rest of the cast have relatively small roles, they go about their business well breathing life into a set of stereotypical small-town characters. Overall “Cujo” is a fine effort for what it is. It has a workmanlike feel throughout, but it is well-constructed and provides some genuinely tense and finely tuned moments when Cujo lays siege to the Donna and Tad. ( )

Monstrous canine evil stalks a helpless, isolated family.
2000 digitally mastered version