Start Your Year With ‘A Boy and His Dog’: A Bonkers 1975 Movie Set in 2024

Happy new year, America! Now that the festive season is over, the ball has dropped and we’re swinging the door open on 2024, you might be wondering what the next 12 months has in store. Maybe you’re checking astrological charts for clues. Perhaps you’re studying political forecasts. If you’re less logical, you might even be looking back through movie archives to see what the silver screen has predicted about this year.

Which leads us to A Boy and His Dog, a 1975 gem* of a film set in 2024. Never heard of it? Not to worry, for I am about to tell you all about it. And you might want to strap in, kids, because if this version of 2024 is even halfway correct, we’re all in big, big trouble.

(*Wait. Did I say gem? I meant piece of crap. My bad.)

A Boy and His Dog stars a young Don “Miami Vice” Johnson (Dakota’s dad!) and an actress named Susanne Benton who I thought for this entire movie was a young Jessica Walter. (Walter played Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development. Pretend it’s her. It’s more fun.)

The story is set in the aftermath of World War IV, a conflict that helpful subtitles inform us “lasted 5 days” and “finally solved the problem of urban blight.” (Seems totally reasonable!) Johnson plays Vic, a feral 18-year-old whose days revolve around seeking out women to rape. (We don’t see any on-screen raping because that might make him too much of an unlikeable protagonist, right? Cool.)

Vic is fairly successful at All Of The Sexual Assault because his companion is — brace yourselves! — a psychic dog named Blood who can telepathically communicate with Vic. (I did tell you to brace yourselves…) Vic rewards Blood for this service with food, since Blood lost the ability to hunt when he acquired his special abilities. And we’re already in knots from trying to get this plot to make a modicum of sense.

When Blood is psychically searching his vicinity for women/marauding enemies/food to steal, he lies down and an audible radar sounds. Like, actual beeping. Every single time this happens, you have to make an active effort to not think about which part of this dog is making this noise.

It’s a sidenote, but the very cute shaggy dog (real name: Tiger) playing the misanthropic Blood is woefully miscast, looking more like the lead in a Disney movie where family pets get into cuddly japes then rescue someone from a fire. I ask you: Does this dog look like a rape apologist to you? Does he?!

When we first find Vic and Blood, Vic is demanding Blood find him a woman to attack and Blood (who sounds like the car from Knight Rider is speaking inside a cave) is berating him with insults, correcting his grammar and laughing at Vic’s sexual frustration. “You’re not a nice person Albert,” Blood says. “You’re not a nice person at all.” (There is never an explanation about why Blood calls Vic “Albert” or why Vic hates it so much, which is not at all confusing.)

After Blood does an intense radar session, he declares: “I detect no living female person within my range, sir. I have sniffed and I have cast and I have a negative reading. However, I’d be delighted to tell you a suggestive story if you think that would help?” If Disney ever made a movie about a porn dog, Tiger would’ve nailed it.

Blood tries to make Vic a little more refined by teaching him about history. What we learn is that “World War III, hot and cold, lasted from June 1950 to March 1983.” When Blood makes Vic list former presidents, Vic says “Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy.” Man. It is startling how much no one saw Ronald Reagan coming.

Out in the deserts of what apparently used to be Phoenix, Vic and Blood run into two types of people. The first I’m calling Bands of Burners (I know you can already picture what that looks like). The second are referred to as “screamers” — some kind of monstrous humanoids we never see on camera. Vic says Blood saved him from the screamers once, describing them only as “oozing and eyelashes.” One gets the sense that A Boy and His Dog’s budget ran out before anyone could get around to making these monsters.

To break up the monotony of their existence, one night Vic and Blood head to their local porn movie theater because every single human in this movie is obsessed with sex. At the outdoor ramshackle space, you can also get a haircut, popcorn, a shower, fire in a barrel and the use of some kind of gun coat-check manned by a boy in a box. Hopefully by the end of real-life 2024, these types of establishments will be everywhere.

Blood’s radar locates a woman at the dusty public porn hub. She’s disguised as a man but, under Blood’s direction, Vic manages to follow her into an underground pit where she stands completely naked, surrounded by cobwebs, casually brushing her hair into a bouffant. This is presumably how director L. Q. Jones thinks all women groom themselves in the privacy of their own pits. Vic tries to get all rapey with her but the girl starts a conversation instead, introducing herself as Quilla. Then a Band of Burners shows up and everyone has an incredibly confusing shootout. Blood gets injured by the Burners’ dog and starts limping about the place.

What even is this movie?

After the shootout, Vic, Quilla and Blood all find a secure place to hide. Vic and Quilla do some consensual lovin’, during which Blood bounces up and down on a mattress and mutters “Once more into the breach, dear friend.” After a bunch of enthusiastic humping has taken place, Blood announces “I’m not going to keep pretending I am asleep, Albert.” (We’ve all been there, Blood…)

In the morning, Blood calls Vic into a separate room and suggests they ditch Quilla. This is bizarre, given that keeping her around would actually save Blood from having to find women for Vic to rape all the live long day. Isn’t it better for literally everyone if Vic has a girlfriend? This movie makes no sense.

Quilla tries to persuade Vic to go to “Downunder,” where she lives. Vic vehemently objects to this proposal, tells her she must stay with him, so she knocks him out and escapes. This is the first sensible thing that has happened.

When Vic comes to, he decides to go in search of Quilla, abandoning Blood next to the metal door that leads to Downunder (Quilla said dogs aren’t particularly welcome there). And with that, Vic and Blood are suddenly rule followers!

Once in Downunder, Vic runs into a group of farmer-looking dudes who, for some reason, are all wearing — in addition to plaid red shirts and overalls — white face paint, cartoon rosy cheeks and lipstick. Naturally, they force Vic into a bubble bath and scrub him with a brush.

What. Is. Happening?

After bath time, Vic witnesses marching bands, wholesome family gatherings and a frankly terrifying barbershop quartet. Everyone has the same goddamn makeup on.

Vic winds up in a strange courtroom where the granddad from the 1989 classic Parenthood sentences everyone (including another psychic dog!) to death for minor infractions. We then find out that Quilla lured Vic to her underground community in exchange for a place on the court. Despite getting what he wanted, Parenthood granddad denies Quilla her reward, scoffs at her ambition and arranges to have her married off, along with every other young woman in town. Because, okay!

We learn that Parenthood granddad wanted Vic lured into his domain because Downunder men are sterile from living underground for too long. (Apparently, these exact same conditions haven’t had as much impact on female reproductive organs, which is all terribly convenient.) Vic is to be held against his will so that he might help repopulate the Earth. Unfortunately for him, that doesn’t involve more doin’ it. Rather, Vic is strapped down, gagged and attached to a mysterious sperm extraction machine and I must ask again: WHAT EVEN IS THIS MOVIE?

Quilla shows up in a wedding dress and helps get Vic free. She is aided by a group of other rebellious teens who subsequently get their necks snapped by a farmer-looking robot dude, because there is always a robot trying to kill people in 1970s sci-fi movies. By the time Vic and Quilla escape to the desert upstairs, the still-waiting Blood is half-dead, weary from his injuries and starving. Vic, unwilling to lose his longtime psychic companion, concludes that the best way to solve this problem is to get Blood a good, hearty meal right then and there. So he kills Quilla (off camera of course!) and Blood eats her.

And that’s the end.

I’m not joking. That’s the whole movie. Someone actually made this. And it’s what some people in 1975 thought 2024 might look like.

Please try and take comfort in the fact that whatever really happens this year, it probably won’t be as stupid as A Boy and His Dog.

Good luck out there.