L. Q. Jones (1927–2022)

Decent, if slightly uninspiring adaptation of Harlan Ellison's classic post-apocalyptic novella. The screenplay by director L. Q. Jones faithfully follows Ellison's tale and opens with the boy and dog of the title, Vic (Don Johnson) and Blood (voiced by Tim McIntire), wandering the post World War IV wastelands. The pair have s telepathic link and their objectives appear limited to finding women for Vic to rape and food for Blood to eat. All is going well until they "find" the beautiful Quilla (Susanne Benton) who lures Vic to the underground city of Topeka, which is ruled by an ominous Committee led by Lou Craddock (Jason Robards). Plastered in make-up and impotent the men of Topeka capture Vic and strap him to a sperm-milking machine in order to replenish their sperm bank. With Blood abandoned on the surface Vic has to battle his way out of Topeka.

L. Q. Jones does well with his adaptation and despite the obvious low budget he captures the apocalyptic feel of the book as well as the vicious and angry social critique that Ellison poured into Topeka. He gives everything a sheen of dark humour and a black cynicism very much in keeping with the source novella. Unfortunately the final climatic punch that gave much of the written story so much of its resonance doesn't really work in the film - Jones appears to lose his nerve a touch and doesn't really slam home the final denouement. The telepathic conversations between Vic and Blood are nicely written and delivered and work surprisingly well and Jones doesn't sanitise the fact that Vic's key motivation is simply to find women for sex and that he considers rape absolutely fine. The creepily made up citizens of Topeka also work well as does Ellison and Jones' bitter and biting attack on middle-American values as envisioned in the underground town. The acting is pretty good - Don Johnson is nigh on perfect as the dumb, sex-obsessed boy, with Tim McIntire doing some excellent work as the voice of Blood. There is something slightly crazy and more than a touch tasteless about "A Boy and His Dog", but on the whole there is enough left-field lunacy and unpredictability to make this a hugely interesting film, despite it never really fully igniting.… (mehr)

The Brotherhood of Satan is the novelization of a 1971 horror movie of no great critical note, and it certainly reads that way. While I haven't seen the movie, I suspect that the book is very faithful to it, because it fails to offer any details that couldn't be represented on film. (Author Jones was a member of the cast and assisted on the script.) The characters are cut-outs with little or no interiority. Despite that superficiality, some of the scenes are difficult to picture, particularly ones in the Satanists' lair that involved passage "through" a fireplace. Supernatural occurrences get a gee-whiz treatment that makes them feel cheap.

As far as the Satanic conspiracy goes, it has a lot of liturgical action, which is what attracted my attention to the film/book in the first place. But the liturgy is decidedly uninformed and clumsy, with addresses to "Ye who penetrates the future" (ouch!) and "Satanacus." The choice of an "ansate cross" for the principal insignia of the cultists is somewhat spoiled by the fact that the book cover and movie stills show a figure that is not really a crux ansata. The "Satanic" rites involve an unseemly level of self-abasement among the worshippers, and a practically Christian sense of penitence.

To its credit, the story ends with the triumph of the evil forces, with the hapless "protagonists" merely lulled into a grateful sense of having survived the episode, while their daughter has been spiritually possessed (presumably for life) by one of the creepy old cultists.… (mehr)