“You know, Albert, sometimes you can be such a putz.”

Justin’s rating: Making me pretty happy that my dog doesn’t incessantly jabber to me in my mind

Justin’s review: Like many of you, one of the formative CRPGs of my life was Fallout and its sequels (and Wasteland a good decade before that). There was something about this bleak yet darkly humorous “post-nuclear adventure” that struck a chord.

Of course, a game like that didn’t emerge from thin air; it had influences, and 1975’s A Boy and His Dog was one of the more notable titles in that library. Heck, this is where the nickname “Dogmeat” comes from, did you know that?

Oh, and I had to review it this year, since A Boy and His Dog takes place in 2024 AD.

This is certainly an odd one that requires the viewer to accept its satirically amoral tone that runs throughout. Instead of this being a post-apoc tale of a noble warrior freeing people and setting wrongs to right, it’s about a teen and his dog who ruthlessly kill and plunder their way across the wasteland in search of the next meal or woman to take.

Vic (Miami Vice’s Don Johnson) is a fierce fighter, that’s for sure, but he’d be lost if he didn’t have his canine companion Blood (voiced by Tim McIntire). Blood is telepathic — we’ll chalk that up to “radiation” and “mutation” — which allows the two to communicate silently. And also to squabble silently, which is something they do an awful lot.

So we don’t have a hero or really even an anti-hero in Vic. He is, as Blood says, “not a nice person at all.” Yet the camera stays attached to him, so he’s our vessel through this messed-up new world.

The duo are looking for a place called “Over the Hill,” where civilization is allegedly is coming back in some form. But Vic keeps detouring them to get laid and Blood is obsessed with food, so it’s slow going. They’re also being tracked by faceless mutants for reasons unknown.

They do find one girl, Quilla June (Susanne Benton), who turns out to be a honeypot of sorts for an underground society. Vic is tempted to join them, especially after they promise to pamper him as a potential stud, but Blood refuses to go below ground and thus stays behind. Suffice to say, it’s not the dream that Vic hoped it’d be.

The dystopian underground realm — a “Vault” in Fallout parlance — of Topeka, as it is called, is a twisted reimagining of a pre-war Americana. Hence the satire. It’s a weird, weird place with odd rules, a kooky dress code, and the occasional android (yes, android).

A Boy and His Dog notoriously rankled more than a few filmgoers, especially around the time it released. How much of this you take seriously is your call, but I don’t think that novelist Harlan Ellison or the filmmakers are delivering a serious piece of art. It’s meant to be provocative and irreverent, a story to goose you and get your dander up as you huff about Vic and Blood’s general callousness to human life and dignity. If you throw up your hands and go, “Well, I never!” at stuff like this, better stay away.

While I’m not usually one for movies without heroes, there’s a sort of fearless honesty in envisioning the post-apocalypse as something other than a fun playground for survivalists. It reminds me of The Road‘s bleak outlook on a dying world and the remaining people who gladly trade their humanity for meals and hedonistic pleasures.

If nothing else, A Boy and His Dog embodies the non-traditional approach to film that repels most but draws in cult lovers like flies. It’s not a movie that’d be made today (even though it’s set in 2024), which gives it a rare quality.

Intermission!

• Want to grab the audience’s attention? Start your movie with about 11 atomic explosions!
• World War IV lasted five days
• “Eh war is hell.”
• He calls Blood “Dogmeat!” Always wondered where Fallout got that from.
• Blood is happy to provide a suggestive story
• That whistling theme song is so dorky
• We had four Kennedy presidents in total
• Fun fact: Blood is played by the same dog who was “Tiger” on The Brady Bunch
• “That’s our boy. Put out the cheese.”
• Dogs really like popcorn
• Blood annoyed at the girl making kissy faces at him while he’s trying to figure out how to fend off an ambush
• The Screamer yell
• Maybe don’t film your action scenes at night when the audience can’t see anything that’s going on?
• “I locate females, I don’t guarantee their behavior.”
• Vic really doesn’t care about anyone other than himself as he leaves a wounded Blood in the desert… jerk
• Vic gets a bath!
• This movie gets so weird, so fast when he goes Downunder. I mean, why wouldn’t there be marching bands underground? And clown-faced people?
• How are those trees growing underground in such low light?
• “I’ve got to get back in the dirt so I can feel clean.”
• It takes a lot of bullets to put down an android
• Yay! Ending with cannibalism and a bad joke!