Ask someone to name their favorite Stephen King film adaptationand you’re going to get a variety of answers. While not every one of King’s works has found success on the big screen, there are 40-plus years of big hits to be found, fromBrian DePalma’s version ofCarriein 1976 to the dual box office smashes from thetwoItfilmsa few years ago.
One of the betterStephen Kingadaptations isCujo, the 1981 novel turned into a feature film just two years later. It’s also one of his hardest books to read and a difficult film to watch due to its subject matter, as the story centers on a mother and her sick son trapped in a car with a rabid Saint Bernard on the other side. Even though we know it’s fake, watching a dog go mad isn’t easy to watch or read about. The claustrophobic setting of the car makes us feel helpless. As horrific of a film as it is to watch, it could have been even worse. In King’s novel, the kid dies. Thankfully, it was decided that this fate couldn’t be repeated in the film.
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‘Cujo’ Is One of Stephen King’s Most Uncomfortable Novels
In most of Stephen King’s novels, the aim is to scare the reader. While he’s scaring us, however, we’re also having fun, due to King’s ability to create such interesting characters and well-crafted stories.Itmight be incredibly scary, but between the killer clown attacks, we get to spend time with The Loser’s Club.Carrieis heartbreaking,but it’s also riveting, taking in this story of a girl with telekinetic powers fighting back against her aggressors.
A few of King’s works, while well-written and tense, are far from fun.Among those isGerald’s Game, which is about a woman left handcuffed to her bed after her husband dies on top of her. It’s filled with suspense, but the dire, claustrophobic feel of it doesn’t make it worthy of a re-read for many. The same can be said forCujo. Released in 1981, the novel was another in a long string of major accomplishments for King, who, even though he was still early in his career, was already a household name.
Cujois scary as hell, but fun is about the last thing you’ll have reading it. It has the claustrophobia ofGerald’s Gamebut turns the tension up even higher. The story involves a woman named Donna who brings her young son Tad along to take their car to a friend’s place to get it fixed. It’s here they encounter Cujo, a giant Saint Bernard driven mad by rabies. He’s already killed his owner, and now he’s fighting like hell to get inside the car and kill Donna and Tad as well. Donna and Tad spend days trapped in the car, the sun beating down on them, as they begin to weaken from dehydration. Tad is barely able to stay conscious in the latter parts of the novel. In the end, Cujo is killed and Donna is saved, but it’s too late for Tad. The young boy has died. It’s a heartbreaking ending, and while it works in horrifying the reader, it’s not satisfying. We spend several hundred pages rooting for this little kid to make it, only for him to pass in his mother’s arms. Donna has lived, but at what price? It’s not wrong to think she might be better off dead too.
The Movie Version of ‘Cujo’ Works Better by Giving Us a Happy Ending
At the end of the movieCujo, Donna (Dee Wallace) manages to get out of the car and get Tad (Danny Pintauro) inside a house. She lays him on the kitchen table. He’s covered in sweat and unresponsive, seemingly very dead. Donna puts water in his mouth and on his body, desperately trying to cool him, but it looks like it’s all too late. She begins giving him CPR, and all the while her husband Vic (Daniel Hugh Kelly) races to the house. Donna screams her son’s name, begging him to breathe, and then…he does. Donna bawls and takes her son into her arms as the joyful music swells. It’s not a happy ending yet though, as Cujo jumps through a window into the home. As the dog lunges toward mother and son, Donna picks up a gun and shoots Cujo dead. It’s then that her husband arrives. Donna, holding Tad, meets him on the porch, and they embrace.
It’s a much more fitting ending. Novels are more personal and more intimate. We read them alone, and if they offer us bleakness, we understand that. Films are different in how we usually approach them. We watch movies as an escape, they’re cathartic. Nine times out of ten, they follow a structure fans expect: we meet our heroes, something bad happens to them, and then they overcome. Yes, sometimes, the villain wins in the end, but not like this, where a kid is killed. That goes too far for many moviegoers.
Stephen King Was Grateful That Dee Wallace-Stone Fought To Change the Ending of ‘Cujo'
It’s not the first time a novel with a sad ending was changed for a film, especially when it involves the death of a child. Just last year,M. Night Shyamalandid this withKnock at the Cabin. InPaul Tremblay’s novel,The Cabin at the End of the World, young Wen is accidentally shot to death halfway through. It takes the wind out of your sails. While her fathers fight through the rest of the novel to survive, part of the reader has already checked out. Their child is dead. There can be no resolution for them. Shyamalan understood this for the film andrefused to direct the movie unless that could be changed. It was, and in the film Wen lives.
Dee Wallace, who plays Donna in the film version ofCujo, had a similar request when she took the role.In a 2007 interview with Den of Geek, Wallace was asked ifCujo’s ending should have matched the book’s. “Hell, no! And I was very very active in getting that changed.” In 1983, Wallace had some pull. She wasn’t just any actress. This was the woman who had played the mom inE.T. the Extra-Terrestrialthe year before. If one of the stars of the biggest box office draw of all time (all that time) had an opinion, you listened. Even Stephen King himself agreed that the decision to have Tad live in the film was the right one. “Actually, Stephen King wrote us and said ‘Thank God you changed the end, I never got more hate mail than when I killed the boy at the end ofCujo.'” Wallace went on about why she fought for the change, explaining that most of the people who went into the movie hadn’t read the book and wouldn’t know what to expect. “You cannot ask a theatre audience to go through and invest all this love and then pulling for this little boy to be saved and then rip that away from them, in a movie. And obviously, it doesn’t work in the book.”
you’re able to agree or disagree that Tad dying doesn’t work in the novel ofCujo. As stated earlier, the more personal intimacy of novels makes unhappy endings easier to digest. In a movie, however, Tad dying wouldn’t have worked. The film version ofCujoended up finding a lot of popularity on cable TV. Though dark, it was a fun watch and rewatch for people who’d already seen it. It may have been dark, but we knew it would all be worth it with a rewarding ending. The film wouldn’t be nearly as popular if it had kept its dark ending. Who wants to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon on the couch watching a kid die?
