The FilmNerds Blog

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

We arrive at the final and probably best-known Stephen King adaptation on our countdown, Cujo. While Cujo was only slightly more successful financially than The Dead Zone and Christine, I think it’s fair to say that it’s the most recognizable title of the three amongst the general population in 2010. It’s almost become a ubiquitous reference point in American popular culture. Mention Cujo and everyone, whether they’ve seen the film or not, knows that you’re talking about an evil dog.

Cujo did for dogs what Jaws did for sharks. It put an image in the minds of moviegoers that stuck with them, an idea which probably wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I confess that after watching Cujo, my next encounter with my uncle’s usually lovable golden retriever was just a tiny bit more nerve-racking than usual.

Having a lasting effect on the popular culture in a way that almost influences our basic fear responses over 25 years later has to be a sign of a successful horror film. But Cujo certainly wasn’t viewed that way at the time of its release. Roger Ebert was mercilessly critical of the film (he even mentions it derogatorily in his reviews for the other two 1983 King adaptations) and even the kindest major critics of the time called it mediocre and bland. Why then does the film hold such a strong place in the memories of viewers today and stand as an almost universally recognized horror classic?

I think the discrepancy comes from the film’s very unconventional approach to the horror genre. Like a conventional horror film of its time, say a typical slasher film like Halloween, the first half of the film is spent meticulously setting up the perfect scenario, leaving no holes that could distract the audience from simply experiencing the terrifying situation. King, who was perhaps more involved in this film’s production than any other adaptation of his work to date at the time, knew that in order for the audience to remain focused on what was happening later in the film, he would have to anticipate all the proposed solutions the audience would have to the heroine’s problem. Every possibility for salvation, right down to the mail man, is accounted for and neatly (though not unreasonably) taken care of.

But King’s hour-long setup does more than just tie up potential loose ends. It also creates a carefully crafted emotional subplot that gives our heroine’s plight later in the film an additional level of tension.

I won’t re-create the entire setup for you here but here’s a quick summary: Our main character is Donna, a suburban housewife who has revealed to her loving and devoted husband that she has been cheating on him with a local scumbag. The husband, despite his overwhelming love for their son, has decided that he needs a few days to work things out and heads out of town for an indefinite vacation.

Unfortunately for Donna, her car needs fixing so she decides to take it up to a local handyman just outside of town to see if he can fix it. The handyman and his family are unfortunately out of town and Donna’s car won’t start back up once she realizes this.

Now comes the film’s namesake: Cujo, the dog belonging to the handyman, has been bitten by a bat and has been infected with rabies. Cujo is a Saint Bernard, a formidable and intimidating dog, and is already covered in slime and blood from the first person who realized (too late) that he was rabid by the time Donna sees him.

I won’t reveals what happens beyond that but as you can see, our scenario finds Donna trapped in her broken down car with her small child with no hope of anyone turning up to help her for the next several days. Dee Wallace (The Howling, E.T.) is phenomenal as Donna, a fact that even the film’s harshest critics in 1983 were able to admit. The shift in her attitude as time goes by in the car is captivating to watch. We see everything in her face and reactions, from the sheer visceral terror she feels for her life and the life of her child to the guilt she feels about how her actions have in part created the situation she’s in.

Almost equally impressive is the heartbreaking performance by Danny Pintauro as Tad, Donna’s young son. Pintauro, who would later star in the long-running sitcom “Who’s The Boss?”, made his screen debut in Cujo and gives what is in my opinion one of the best performances ever by a child in a horror film. The film establishes early on that Tad has a fear of monsters in his closet that can only be soothed by the voice of his father saying one of those special little routine poems that all parents make up for their children. Donna, of course, doesn’t know the poem and is unable to soothe Tad’s terror when they are beset by what Tad believes to be a real monster. Pintauro’s screams and cries seem truly genuine and however director Lewis Teague was able to coax this out of him, it was incredibly effective. As a parent, watching a terrified child scream and not knowing how to calm him down has to be one of the most harrowing situations I can think of.

(SPOILER ALERT) According to a number of interviews and stories about the making of Cujo, King’s close involvement with the film stems in part from a desire to correct some mistakes he felt he made when writing the novel. King wrote Cujo at the peak of his alcoholism and while the plot and characters are among the most honest and believable of his career, the plot (particularly the ending) plays out in a way that is perhaps a bit too brutal for movie audiences. King has said that he regrets ending the novel the way he did and wanted to correct that error when writing the screenplay for Cujo. (END SPOILER)

Regardless of the film’s resolution, it’s the setup that makes Cujo effective and thus memorable as a horror film and to me this marks some of the best true horror writing of King’s career. Add to that an excellent pair of performances and some stunning (if occasionally overwrought) cinematography by Jan de Bont (who would eventually earn a reputation as one of the best action cinematographers of the 1980s) and you’ve got a horror film that holds up very well to scrutiny over a quarter of a century later.

Next Up: The quintessential space race classic The Right Stuff starring Ed Harris.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

While it’s still pretty far down the list of the top-grossing movies of 1983, I would say that All the Right Moves is the first relatively iconic film on our list. It seems to have grown in stature over time since its initial release, probably because of the eventual superstardom of its star Tom Cruise.

By the time All the Right Moves hit theaters in October of 1983 (one week before I was born, by the way) Cruise was already one of the hottest young stars in Hollywood thanks to the massively successful hit Risky Business released just two months earlier. In fact, most theaters were probably still showing Risky Business at the time that All the Right Moves premiered. Nearly every review written at the time mentions Risky Business so it was clearly a major cultural phenomenon that probably affected the way a lot of viewers approached All the Right Moves and almost certainly affected the film’s gross.

Cruise plays Stefen Djordjevic, a high school football player from the town of Ampipe, Pennsylvania (the town is named after the fictional American Pipe Company which employs nearly the entire town). The town of Ampipe serves as the villain of the film, essentially. It’s a depressed, stagnant Rust Belt town that represents the opposite of the cinematic American dream, a place where no matter how hard you work, you have no chance of making a better life for yourself. Stefen’s only way out is a college football scholarship, a longshot for him considering his diminutive stature and limited physical talent. But against the odds, Stefen has started to receive a little bit of attention from smaller colleges, though his desire to go to the best engineering school possible leads him to spurn an offer from an unnamed state school at the beginning of the film (the school’s recruiter is played by a very young Terry O’Quinn aka John Locke from Lost).

When Ampipe High School’s season takes a turn for the worse, the road to a college scholarship gets a little bit tougher for Stefen. The film follows the always-reliable dramatic path of tragedy unfolding from a series of misunderstandings, misdirected emotion and unfortunate coincidences. The series of events that leads to Craig T. Nelson’s Coach Nickerson jeopardizing Stefen’s college career never comes off as forced, since each character is given enough screen time for the audience to truly understand all of their actions and the motivations behind them. It’s a classic example of well-written drama, a scenario in which the characters end up hurting each other and themselves despite having the best of intentions at the story’s outset.

Nelson and Cruise both do a great job of adding real sympathy and emotional depth to their roles but it’s two supporting performances that gave the film its most interesting dramatic moments. Chris Penn is absolutely heartbreaking as Stefen’s teammate and best friend Brian, the team’s most talented player who is forced to turn down a scholarship to USC after impregnating his girlfriend. A lot of fans and critics went after All the Right Moves for wrapping up its story too neatly and happily but Penn’s character arc to me balances this out and gives us a taste of the tragedy Stef would face if he never got out of Ampipe. There’s a moment where Penn’s character is trying to enjoy himself at a party with his classmates just before heading off to his honeymoon in Pittsburgh and the look on his face as he tries to convince everyone that he’s happy with his situation is absolutely devastating.

The other real gem in the film is a young Lea Thompson, another bright young talent nabbed that this film caught just before she took off. Thompson’s resume was virtually blank coming into All the Right Moves but in the two years following the film she would star in Red Dawn and Back to the Future, two of the most iconic films of the 1980s, and it’s not surprising to see why her career took off after this film. She exudes girlish charm and while she’s a beautiful girl, she’s comes off as identifiable rather than intimidating. To apply my 2010 perspective, she reminds me a lot of Rachel McAdams, a girl that is certainly attractive enough to be a romantic lead but gets most of her appeal from her friendly, girl-next-door personality rather than raw sex appeal. Thompson’s role as Stefen’s girlfriend mostly reiterates the same themes present throughout the rest of the film (she wants to be a musician but can’t afford college) but the biggest asset she brings to the film is the addition of yet another pressure on Stefen’s life, the pressure of maintaining a relationship. She’s a supportive girlfriend to be sure but she has needs too and Stefen’s lack of emotional maturity creates more problems for him to deal with throughout the film.

Director Michael Chapman hadn’t done much directing before this film, and didn’t much after either, but real film nerds know him as one of the great cinematographers of the late ’70s and early ’80s. His work on Taxi Driver and Raging Bull put him in the pantheon of great DPs and though he didn’t continue to work at that level going forward in his career, it should be noted that when he took on All the Right Moves, he was at the absolute top of his game and I think it shows. Chapman had the foresight to hire a then-unknown Jan de Bont to shoot All the Right Moves and it’s interesting to see de Bont working with such subtle material knowing that he would later go on to become one of the leading names in blow-stuff-up-real-good filmmaking. The bleak, depressed setting of the film is crucial to telling this story and that setting is brilliantly synthesized by de Bont’s blue and gray-toned photography.

Is the ending of All the Right Moves ham-fisted and too convenient? Absolutely it is. It’s a little odd to see a film like this so hesitant to end things in a more logical, if more depressing, way particularly when it takes its inspiration so obviously from one of the most dark, depressing dramas of the 1970s, The Deer Hunter. I suppose in the end the fact that our subject matter is football rather than the Vietnam War probably led the filmmakers to opt for a happier ending. Still despite the rather gutless resolution, the film stands up today as a really effective portrayal of a classic story of teenage angst. It works particularly well set against today’s backdrop of economic depression and seemingly bleak outlooks for the future.

All the Right Moves might be remembered today because of the big names who got their start in the film but it continues to endure as a watchable film because of truthfully it depicts its characters and their hopes, fears and desires.

Next Up: Valley Girl starring Nicholas Cage.