The first half is pretty imaginative and darkly funny, the second half is Zardoz-level terrible only without the unintentional hilarity.

"The execution doesn't quite enliven the premise, but there's still enough enjoyably offbeat moments here to make this one worth digging up."

A true love story in the most honest sense; perhaps the only on to ever make me cry. And you've gotta love Jason Robards in anything he does.

Now ALL of my points go to the setting of the story and the general feel of the post apocalyptic world, which the director does nail. Christ are the characters a trip. Don Johnson is a scavenger rapist who has such pleasant lines such as "aww why did they have to go and cut her up, she coulda been used three more times." Your only real female character, Quilla June, is portrayed as manipulative and weak and gets eaten at the end to keep blood alive. Yeah, fuck this misogynistic "cult classic"

This film should have been right up my alley--gritty, 70's, sci-fi. But it is flawed, and I want to be very clear: Its problems are NOT its low budget. A well-written and directed film can overcome budget. Here the issue is distractions. Examples: the "Screamers" are a crucial plot point but are never explained; the Topekans wear very distracting clown paint, upstaging their murderous nature. Had the serious themes not been overshadowed by directorial bumbling, this could have been a classic.

Great film.

I have to say that no matter this flick is pretty old and there's details I do not like, the film as a movie is quite okay. Of course it takes some time to accept Don Johnson on leading role, but he's in the end okay as well. In the prewords of recent Vic and Blood comic adaptation (drawn by Richard Corben) Mr. Harlan Ellison was upset on something in the movie. Now I can see it. According the original story, Vic never touches the meat! :7

It's weird for the sake of being weird, which I can respect. The ending is just fantastic.

The movie takes a rather large turn maybe halfway through, and essentially contains two fully imagined worlds. Funny stuff.

Overrated post-apocalyptic futurism roughly midway between Zardoz and Mad Max. Maybe slightly above average for sci-fi, but that really isn't saying much. The moral of the movie seems to be dog > woman but maybe it's just me.

This movie has one of the coolest premises ever: a horny boy and a telepathic dog are striving for survival in a post-apocalyptic world. What I found extremely fascinating in this movie was not the idiosyncratic plot or characters (which are really good), but the way this piece of cinema constantly changes. One minute you're looking at a PoMo western, the other - at a coming of age drama that turns into an Orwellian dystopia. Seriousness, playfulness, sex, sci-fi and irony - it's all there!

Underappreciated film full of great dark humor.

This is so nice surprise... Movie is so cynic sometimes, have great dialogs.... Great little trash movie...

It feels like an elaborate homage to A Clockwork Orange with enough dark humor in it to make it a pleasant movie-watching experience.

Some people find this low-budget adaptation of a famous Harlan Ellison story brilliant but it's always left me rather cold -- and from what I've heard, Ellison doesn't like it much either. Grim but often funny, with Johnson hitting just the right note of postadolescent angst.

Great novella.

pretty cool

M: 75/100 S 80/100 Mike: Slow and ultra-outre, but kind of awesome. The ending made it all worthwhile. Stars Don Johnson as a post-apocalyptic nomad who can telepathically communicate with his dog...I kid you not. Weirdo movie. Sophia: This is an awesome 70s b-movie, which fits in nicely with the genre Roger Corman productions (though it is not itself a Roger Corman production), it's totally weird, but highly recommended.

Has lots of flaws but I kinda liked the relationship between Vic and Blood. Also the ending is just brilliant.

pieces of it can be rather boring and it has fairly bad production value, but it has a plot with great potential and a fantastic ending.

Psychotic and disgusting, this movie sees the other side of things to do in a nuclear holocaust.

Good thing it's up on archive.org for free, so I finally got to see it and make up my mind about this supposed classic, but the only things that work are the setting and the overall story, weird as it may be. The best performance in the movie is delivered by the mutt, cinematography suffers from a lack of lighting, direction is absent, dialog is corny/stupid most of the time, etc. etc. The movie has absolutely ZERO production value, so maybe with a budget it might have been something. Who knows.

Quite good (and faithful to the story)--except for that Benji dog. Even if that's how it was described by Ellison, they shoulda changed it (it just won't play on the screen).

This is the best thin Don Johnson will ever do. A REALLY strange vision of the future, especially the people who live in the bomb shelter

Just read the short story, which is excellent. The movie... ugh.

On the edge of being a great movie.

Definitely original, but not really very satisfying. If only Harlan Ellison had not been suffering from writer's block and written the script himself