A Boy and His Dog

In the radioactive wasteland of 2024, after a five-day World War IV has mud-flooded America into a desert of scavengers, mutants, and scrap-metal lean-tos, a horny, none-too-bright teenager named Vic (a young Don Johnson) survives by teaming up with Blood, a sarcastic, highly intelligent telepathic dog who sniffs out women in exchange for food. Their uneasy, Odd-Couple partnership leads them from the surface ruins into a nightmarish underground “utopia” that’s a venomous parody of 1950s small-town America, where Vic is wanted only as a walking sperm bank. Directed by character actor L.Q. Jones (a Peckinpah regular making his feature debut) from Harlan Ellison’s Nebula-winning novella, this independently produced black-comedy cult classic is a savage, darkly funny portrait of post-apocalyptic survival that beat Mad Max to the wasteland, won a Hugo, and still shocks with its cynical punchline.