A Boy and His Dog (1975)

In co-writer/director L.Q. Jones' vulgar and eccentric black comedy and off-beat cult sci-fi film - it was advertised as "an R rated, rather kinky tale of survival." The screenplay was based on fantasy author Harlan Ellison's novella "A Boy and His Dog" written in 1969. The low-budget independent film financed by the director's own company - LQ/Jaf Productions (L.Q. Jones & Friends), was made for approximately $400,000 dollars.

Mad Max franchise director George Miller praised the film as influential on his own work. The same year's The Stepford Wives (1975) reflected its similar concerns about life in conformist suburbia. Other previous films about underground mutants in a post-apocalyptic world included: World Without End (1956), The Time Machine (1960), and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970).

The dystopic setting of this wild and kinky doomsday (and coming-of-age) story was in the post-apocalyptic year of 2024 A.D. in the nuclear wasteland of the SW US (near Phoenix, AZ) after WWIV (known as the Five-Day War or the Nuclear War of 2007). It told about the above-ground survival of a teenaged, uneducated, 18 year old scavenger named Vic (Don Johnson) and his telepathic, super-intelligent talking dog named Blood ("Tiger") (who annoyingly often addressed Vic as "Albert"), making it a hybrid "buddy" film as well. Most people on the scorched Earth were forced to live underground in a warped, agrarian community called Topeka, ruled by a cold and impassive Committee.

• horny and lustful 18-year old Vic (Don Johnson), an orphaned redneck loner (known as a "solo"), survived above-ground in the desert wasteland that once was the civilized city Phoenix, AZ, by foraging and scavenging for food and sex; he was assisted by his wise-cracking, telepathic, ex-police dog partner-companion Blood (voice of Tim McIntire), a shaggy sheepdog who was unable to forage for himself; in their convenient co-dependent arrangement, Vic would acquire food for Blood in exchange for Blood finding solo females for Vic to rape; they also had to defend themselves against other marauding gangs and cutthroats, crazy drifters, androids and mutants fighting for scarce resources
• Blood knew of rumors of the existence of a "Promised Land" - fertile, paradisiacal, utopian farming areas that were located possibly "over the hill"
• Vic's dog was able to detect a barely-alive, bloodied and mutilated, formerly-raped female in a bunker, and Vic spontaneously, insensitively and misogynistically blurted out: "Hell! They didn't have to cut her! She could have been used two or three more times!"; Blood added: "Ah, war is hell"
• Vic and Blood were confronted by a brutal gang of roving slave-scavengers ruled by self-proclaimed "king" Fellini (Ron Feinberg), battling over crates and bags of canned food that they had discovered and excavated inside a bunker
• Blood was able to smell, track and locate a female prospect for Vic; although disguised as a single male, her scent was picked up in a shantytown camp full of desert rats, where she was watching a worn-out, scratchy sepia-toned, burlesque and western-themed skin-flick reel (A Fistful of Rawhide (1970), a sexploitation cowboy western thriller) in an makeshift outdoor cinema theater; as the action occurred around the screen, there were glimpses of the on-screen film clips representing the social decay of the society
• Quilla was later tracked to a large underground warehouse (an abandoned YMCA building), where Vic approached and realized she was female when she changed into a dress; the beautiful, seductive, beguiling and prospective new lover introduced herself as Quilla June Holmes (Susanne Benton)
• Vic assaulted her at gunpoint, but then the two were forced to join together and ambush and attack a group of marauders and "screamers" (wailing and glowing burn-pit mutants suffering from radiation sickness); Quilla saved Vic from being shot from behind; afterwards while hiding out in a storage tank, Vic and Quilla made love repeatedly; Blood must have sensed Quilla June's scheming and deceptive nature and kept barking at her to try and warn Vic about her
• afterwards, for no reason, she knocked Vic out and fled back to her "Downunder" society, enticing him to follow and setting a lure or trap (that Blood suspected) for him to pursue her through the desert; Vic entered a steel door portal (with one of Quilla's key cards) that led downward (an Alice of Wonderland entry), while Blood (injured from the previous attack) remained above ground; Vic descended on ladders through what appeared to be a missile silo and into a cemetery
• near a firehouse, Vic was attacked by Michael (Hal Baylor), a creepy figure with white clownface make-up (the pasty-face identified him as a member of the "downunder" community) and dressed as a rural farmer in overalls a la Norman Rockwell; as Vic was dragged through a park, it appeared that the inhabitants of the banal community (with fake trees, grass, and buildings) were bizarrely emulating what rural US domestic life must have been in the first half of the 20th century before the devastating Fourth World War - he observed a 'Stars and Stripes'-playing marching band, a barbershop quartet, and families of picknickers; pronouncements to reinforce conformity to moral values was stressed by loudspeakers blaring out news, history lessons, prayers, nostalgic "sound tours" (of wild animals sounds), helpful hints for clean country living and cooking recipes, and instructions for the perfect breakfast; but there were also warning about punishments for transgressions
• the town's community was known as Topeka (named after the ruins of the city in Kansas); the mysterious, subterranean "Downunder" society was ruled by an impersonal Committee, a trilogy consisting of its ruler Lou Craddock (Jason Robards), his assistant and secretary "Mez" Smith (Helene Winston) and business partner Doctor Moore (Alvy Moore); in weekly meetings in the main church or town hall, the Committee's triumvirate handed out blue ribbons for winning entries, but they also revealed how totalitarian, ruthless, dictatorial, and cold-hearted they were by handing out severe judgments and punishments (known as "Farming Out" or "Going to 3"); one defiant, offending middle-aged couple was reprimanded for a "lack of respect, wrong attitude, and failure to obey authority" - they were exiled permanently and lethally to the Farm - to suffer heart attacks!
• Vic became aware that Quilla's step-father was Lou Craddock, who had sent her above ground (as alluring "cheese") to find (and "recruit") a male surface dweller for his and the Committee's nefarious purposes; Quilla expected to be rewarded for successfully completing her mission with a spot on the Committee, but Craddock judged her as too young; he announced plans to select a suitable marriage partner for her, angering both Quilla and her boyfriend Gary (Mike Rupert)
• before the dictatorial Committee, Vic was informed that he had been surveilled and medically-researched as a very suitable studly teen to help re-populate Topeka - by restocking their depleted gene pool with his semen that would be used to impregnate and fertilize dozens of virgins; the subterranean underground residents had been unable to successfully breed due to sterility and/or impotence; Vic happily but inaccurately thought that they were proposing that he sleep with dozens of females; however, the procedure to extract his sperm for procreation would be by exogamous and mechanized means (his reproductive fluids would be collected externally after electro-ejaculation and then implanted through artificial insemination and not via sexual intercourse)
• in the next startling sequence - in a hospital, Vic was strapped down to a table and hooked up to a catheter, designed to milk him of his sperm via an electrode machine; vials of his sperm were handed to hastily-married brides who were being speed-dialed married by an apathetic Preacher (Charles McGraw)
• after Quilla subdued the doctors, she rushed in to tell Vic that the Committee was intent on using him as a "sperm bank" to impregnate 35 women before he was terminated; with help from her, Gary and his friends, Vic was rescued, but expressed no interest in joining a political revolution against the Committee; he only wanted to get back to the surface and his dog Blood; however, Quilla's objective was to turn against the Committee by killing the members of the tyrannical leadership and eliminate its enforcer Michael, but her attempted coup was doomed to fail
• meanwhile, the Committee met in the town's square and announced its judgment on Quilla - she and her revolutionary cohorts would be sent to the Farm; to carry out the Committee's demands, Michael crushed the heads of Gary and his co-conspirator friends with his bare hands before he was revealed to be a robotic android when shot and disabled (short-circuited) by Vic; Lou Craddock ordered a replacement security robot: "Go and get another Michael from the warehouse"
• Quilla and Vic (still wearing hospital scrubs and barefoot) fled to the surface, where Blood told Vic that the scavengers led by Fellini and his gang had taken over; now that she was being victimized by her community, Quilla vowed her love for Vic and urged him to abandon Blood and run away with her because she loved him, rather than to stick around and care for his starving and injured dog Blood; Vic told Quilla: "He needs food and he needs medicine, We gotta get it fast, because we can't make it without him"
• Vic was faced with a difficult choice between the loyalty to his starving dog Blood or to the conniving Quilla June; in the final scene after a fade to black (and after killing Quilla June offscreen, evidenced by torn pieces of her white wedding gown), Vic then cooked and fed her to his starving dog, to revive him; he rationalized the killing and his choice to remain feral rather than entering into a questionable, monogamous relationship: "She said she loved me. Oh, hell, it wasn't my fault she picked me to get all wet-brained over"
• the dark comedy's final controversial pun/one-liner was 'spoken' by Blood, as they walked off into the sunrise and "over the hill" - chuckling to themselves: "Well, I'd say she certainly had marvelous judgment, Albert, if not particularly good taste"