They’re not an easy breed to train, and dog trainer Karl Miller initially tried to persuade Teague to go with an alternate breed. Some lunged, some barked on command, and some simply ran for a distance. There were six actual Saint Bernards, each one trained to handle a specific task. For Cujo, he used a variety of techniques. Teague’s experience on Alligator, in which he had to shoot around a 26-foot long rubber alligator that didn’t work as it was supposed to as well as real alligators on miniature sets, meant he was well suited to working with not so cooperative animal-based movie monsters. Between this move and Medak’s termination, Turner became so infuriated she insisted her credit on the film be a pseudonym. Then the subsequent co-screenwriter, Don Carlos Dunaway, cut out anything pertaining to the supernatural. King recommended director Lewis Teague, having been impressed with his previous film Alligator. Two days into filming, though, well into an elaborate shoot with complicated angles, producer Dan Blatt’s patience wore thin and he fired Medak along with D.P.

Turner’s script focused on that part, and would’ve had the ghostly apparition possess Cujo. In the novel, young Tad is plagued by nightmarish visions of a monster in his closet long before he encounters Cujo. Director Peter Medak ( The Changeling), along with his Changeling screenwriter Barbara Turner, sought to hone in on the supernatural elements from King’s novel. While Cujo as we know it is filled with suspense and anguish, we very nearly received a drastically different take. All of that pales in comparison to the horror of Donna having to fight for her and her son’s life when the Pinto strands them at the Cambers’ place with their homicidal, rabid beast of a dog while Vic is away on business.

Naturally, their young son Tad ( Danny Pintauro) is caught in the middle. It adds further stress to her husband Vic ( Daniel Hugh-Helly), who’s dealing with severe pressures with work. The Pinto is the least of the Trenton’s concerns, though, as wife Donna ( Dee Wallace) has been having an affair with a former high school sweetheart. Joe Camber happens to be the Trenton family’s car mechanic, and their Ford Pinto is on the fritz. The setup is simple the Camber family dog gets bitten by a rabid bat while chasing a rabbit one day.

When you think of the word monster, you usually picture something much more frightening and supernatural, but in the ‘80s (and the hands of King) anything could be a monster. Leave it to Stephen King to take otherwise benign things like a Plymouth Fury or loveable Saint Bernard and turn them into objects of unrelenting terror.

Stephen king rabid dog