50 Fun Facts About Cujo

What breed of dog is Cujo, the gentle family pet turned killer in Stephen King's Maine novel?

Saint Bernard dogs are famous for Alpine rescues and a gentle temper, which is what makes the two-hundred-pound Cujo's turn so frightening.

Which animal's bite on the nose infects Cujo with rabies at the start of Stephen King's novel?

A bat bites Cujo when he pushes his head into a small cave, and the Cambers had never had him vaccinated. The novel's postscript says the cave was never found.

In which model of car are Donna Trenton and her son Tad trapped by the rabid Cujo?

Ford Pinto trouble was something Stephen King knew first-hand: he owned an unreliable one himself and gave Donna the same model.

Which major change did the 1983 film of Cujo make to the ending of Stephen King's novel?

The child survives in the film, while in the novel Tad dies in the car shortly before his father reaches the farm.

Cujo's name came from the alias of a kidnapper of which American newspaper heiress, seized in 1974?

Patty Hearst was abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and one of its members, Willie Wolfe, went by the name Cujo. King gave the alias to his mad dog.

What did Stephen King admit about his novel Cujo in his memoir On Writing?

He hardly remembers it, because he was drinking so heavily at the time. King adds that he likes the book and wishes he could remember enjoying the good parts.

Which actress, the mother in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, played Donna Trenton in the 1983 film Cujo?

Dee Wallace made Cujo a year after E.T. and two years after the werewolf film The Howling, a run that earned her a reputation as a scream queen.

Which scientist's laboratory produced the first vaccine against rabies, the disease that drives Cujo mad?

Louis Pasteur's vaccine was first used in 1885 on a nine-year-old boy who had been mauled by a rabid dog. The boy never fell ill, though rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms appear.

What stood in for Cujo in some shots of the 1983 film, alongside real dogs and animatronic ones?

A man in a dog suit, one of the film's stuntmen, doubled for Cujo in some shots. So did a Labrador and Great Dane cross wearing a costume of its own.

Christopher Stone, Donna's lover in the 1983 film Cujo, was what to its leading lady in real life?

Her husband since 1980, Stone had already starred beside her in a werewolf film. In Cujo he plays the man her character is trying to be rid of.

What kind of business does Vic Trenton run with his partner Roger Breakstone in Stephen King's Cujo?

An advertising agency called Ad Worx is Vic's livelihood, and it depends on one big client.

Which product is at the centre of the scandal that threatens Vic Trenton's firm in Stephen King's Cujo?

Breakfast cereal from the Sharp company scared parents when a bad batch of dye made children appear to be bleeding internally. Vic's TV spots had promised nothing was wrong with it.

Why is Vic Trenton away from Castle Rock while his wife and son are trapped by Cujo?

A business trip takes Vic away to save his firm's biggest account. He forgets to arrange the car repair before he goes, so Donna has to deal with the failing car herself.

What is the trade of Joe Camber, the abusive owner of Cujo in Stephen King's novel?

Auto mechanic Joe Camber works from his farm outside town, which is why Donna nurses her failing car up his road. By the time she arrives, he is already dead.

How does Charity Camber get the money to bargain for a trip away with her son Brett in Cujo?

A lottery win of $5,000 gives Charity something to bargain with, and she uses it to make Joe let her show Brett the possibility of a better life.

In which state does Charity Camber's sister live, the destination of her trip with Brett in Cujo?

Connecticut is home to Charity's sister Holly, who married a lawyer. Charity wants Brett to see that a life unlike his father's is possible.

Which city do Joe Camber and a drinking buddy plan to visit once Charity and Brett leave town in Cujo?

Boston was to be a secret pleasure trip, with a baseball game on the schedule. Neither man lives to make it.

Which neighbor of the Cambers, a hard-drinking war veteran, is the first person Cujo kills?

Gary Pervier lives at the foot of the hill below the Camber place and meets the sick dog in his own yard. Joe finds him only minutes before his own death.

Which Castle Rock poet and furniture refinisher has an affair with Donna Trenton in Stephen King's Cujo?

Steve Kemp takes the break-up badly: he sends Vic a note exposing the affair, then wrecks the Trentons' empty house, which makes him the police's first suspect.

Where does four-year-old Tad Trenton believe a monster is hiding at night in Stephen King's Cujo?

His bedroom closet holds a red-eyed monster that only a charm written by his father can keep away. The real danger turns out to be waiting in daylight.

Which Castle Rock sheriff is killed by Cujo while searching for the missing Donna Trenton and her son?

George Bannerman drives out to check the Camber farm, and Cujo kills him in the dooryard while Donna watches from the car.

Which earlier Stephen King novel introduced Castle Rock and its strangler Frank Dodd, whose memory haunts Cujo?

The Dead Zone was the first novel set in Castle Rock, published two years before Cujo. Its psychic hero exposes Dodd, a town policeman, as the killer.

Castle Rock, the Maine town where Cujo is set, takes its name from a fort in which classic British novel?

Lord of the Flies has a mountain fort called Castle Rock, and Stephen King borrowed William Golding's name for a town he would return to in story after story.

What was Stephen King riding when a growling dog at a rural Maine repair shop gave him the idea for Cujo?

A motorcycle that barely made it to the shop left King exposed when the huge dog came out growling and went for his hand. The owner stopped it with a whack on the rump.

Which 2024 Stephen King story, narrated by an aging Vic Trenton in Florida, is a sequel to Cujo?

Rattlesnakes appeared in the collection You Like It Darker, more than forty years after the novel. It finds Vic retired and sitting out the pandemic on a Gulf Coast island.

Which prize for best novel did Stephen King's Cujo win in 1982, the year after it was published?

British Fantasy Award voters gave Cujo their best-novel prize, the August Derleth Award, even though it is one of King's least supernatural horror novels.

Which 1991 Stephen King novel was billed on its cover as the last story of Castle Rock, the town in Cujo?

Needful Things brings a charming stranger and his curio shop to Castle Rock, and the pranks he asks of his customers end in the town's destruction.

Which Stephen King novella, filmed as Stand by Me, shares its Castle Rock setting with Cujo?

The Body follows four boys from Castle Rock in the summer of 1960, twenty years before Cujo's rampage. It was published in the collection Different Seasons.

Which child actor played Tad Trenton in the 1983 film Cujo before starring in the sitcom Who's the Boss?

Danny Pintauro came to Cujo from the daytime soap As the World Turns. A year later he began eight seasons as the young son in a hit sitcom household.

Which director, who later made The Jewel of the Nile, took over the 1983 film Cujo at the last minute?

Lewis Teague came recommended by Stephen King, who admired his giant-reptile film Alligator. Teague later said he regarded Cujo as his best film.

Which director of the ghost story The Changeling left the 1983 film Cujo two days into shooting?

Peter Medak left together with his director of photography, so the production had to restart with a new director and a new cameraman in its first week.

Which Cujo cinematographer went on to direct the action hits Speed and Twister in the 1990s?

Jan de Bont shot Cujo's cramped car scenes five years before he photographed Die Hard. He joined the film as a replacement when the first cameraman left.

Which voice actor, the longtime Fred of Scooby-Doo, supplied Cujo's snarls and barks in the 1983 film?

Frank Welker provided the vocal effects for Cujo. He has also voiced the Transformers villain Megatron and, since 2002, Scooby-Doo himself.

The 1983 film Cujo is set in Maine, but in which state was most of it actually shot?

California's Sonoma County supplied the Camber farm: the shoot was based on a cattle ranch near Petaluma in the fall of 1982.

Which sequel beat Cujo to become the highest-grossing horror film of 1983 in the United States?

Jaws 3-D led the year's horror films, with Cujo fourth. Cujo still took in about $21 million at home, against a budget of $6 million.

What was Stephen King's verdict on the 1983 film made from his novel Cujo?

He called it terrific and named it one of his favorite adaptations of his work. The critic Roger Ebert, by contrast, called the film dreadful.

Which streaming service announced in March 2025 that it was developing a new film of Stephen King's Cujo?

Netflix announced the remake with Roy Lee attached as producer, more than forty years after the first film version reached cinemas.

In the 1983 film Cujo, what does Donna Trenton finally use to kill the rabid dog inside the Camber house?

A handgun taken from the dead lawman ends it when Cujo crashes through a window after her. In the novel Donna has no gun and must beat the dog down herself.

Which animal is Cujo chasing near the Camber farm when he is bitten and infected with rabies?

A rabbit bolts into a hole too small for the big dog, who pushes his head in after it. The bite that follows goes unnoticed by the whole Camber family.

What does Charity Camber give her son Brett at the very end of Stephen King's novel Cujo?

A new puppy, this one vaccinated, comes several months after the summer's events, while Charity is working to support the two of them.

Besides Cujo himself, what threatens Donna Trenton and her son Tad as they wait inside the stalled car?

The summer heat turns the closed car into an oven, so that thirst becomes as dangerous as the dog. Donna is badly bitten during one attempt to escape.

Rabies, the disease that turns the gentle Cujo violent, causes a fatal inflammation of which organ?

The brain is reached by the virus creeping along the nerves from the bite, so the closer a wound is to the head, the sooner the illness shows.

Why does no postman reach the Camber farm while Cujo keeps Donna Trenton trapped there?

Joe had the mail held for a few days because he expected to be away, so the one visitor Donna is counting on never comes.

Which director named his film company Castle Rock after the Stephen King town where Cujo takes place?

Rob Reiner co-founded Castle Rock Entertainment after the success of his film Stand by Me, which came from a King story set in the town.

Stephen King said Cujo grew from his idea for the ultimate one-set version of which kind of entertainment?

A TV movie with a single set and a single camera angle was the notion, a whole story stretched out of one scene. The one small place became Donna's stalled car.

Cujo co-writer Barbara Turner, credited under a pen name, was the mother of which Hollywood actress?

Jennifer Jason Leigh later starred in Georgia, a film her mother wrote and the two of them produced. On Cujo, Turner hid behind the name Lauren Currier.

Cujo composer Charles Bernstein went on to score which Wes Craven horror film the following year?

A Nightmare on Elm Street came to Bernstein through his agent a year after Cujo. He later reunited with Cujo's director on two independent films.

Cujo ranked 49th on which organization's list of the most challenged books in the US during the 1990s?

American Library Association records place Cujo among the fifty books that Americans most often tried to have removed from shelves between 1990 and 1999.

Stephen King said the owner of the real dog behind Cujo looked like someone from which 1972 backwoods thriller?

Deliverance came to King's mind when the man walked out of the barn behind his growling dog and told the nervous writer that it did not bite.

Which major Hollywood studio bought the US distribution rights to the independently made 1983 film Cujo?

Warner Bros. picked the film up in April 1983, less than four months before it opened. Taft Entertainment had made it for about $6 million and offered it to distributors.