Edgelord Cinema Maximalism (Hugo Cinema 1976)

This blog post is the nineteenth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

Warning: Contains references to sexual violence depicted in the movies being reviewed. Also spoilers.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the new wave of science fiction transformed the genre. Writing styles became more varied. Surrealism and postmodernism were embraced. Authors began to explore previously taboo subjects like sexuality, drug use and abuse, and psychology.

Many of these genre-shaping stories were rightly celebrated for their insight, their boldness, and their inventiveness. But in some quarters, the pushing of boundaries became an end unto itself, and transgression became mistaken as insight.

Although the 1976 Hugo-winning incel manifesto A Boy And His Dog may not have been the nadir of this trend, it’s probably the most iconic example.

Members of our cinema club described
A Boy And His Dog as “a spasm
of puerile adolescent garbage” and
“The most reprehensible
thing I have watched.”
(Image via IMDB)

Set in a post-apocalyptic America decades after a nuclear war, A Boy And His Dog follows Vic (Don Johnson) a libidinous 18-year-old and his telepathic dog Blood as they search for food and women. The main plot of the movie covers Vic getting lured by a woman named Quilla June (Susanne Benton) into the clutches of a community living underneath the ruins of Topeka. After a failed revolution in the underground city, Vic and Quilla June fall in love and escape back to the surface.

The offensiveness of this movie and its misogyny cannot be overstated. The protagonist is a sexual predator who hunts women for sport. The animal sidekick cheers him on in his rapes. This all culminates in a “twist” ending in which Vic murders Quilla June and feeds her to the dog; driving home the fact that this movie treats women as little more than meat. At no point does this movie critique this repulsive stance; rather, it embraces it.

The novella upon which the movie is based provides a blueprint for all these problematic elements, but is slightly more critical in its treatment of Vic and of Blood. Director L.Q. Jones — who was trained on old-school westerns — provides mostly neutral or adoring depictions of Vic and Blood. The appalling end sequence is delivered with a smirk, and with a heroic framing as they ride off into the sunset.

Numerous contemporaneous critics flagged the reprehensible nature of the movie. Joanna Russ wrote a long-form critique, suggesting that “Sending a woman to see A Boy and His Dog is like sending a Jew to a movie that glorifies Dachau; you need not be feminist to loathe this film.” Writing in Yandro, Gary Anderson suggested that he was unlikely to vote for it in the Hugos.

A Boy And His Dog should not have been nominated for a Hugo Award and yet it won one. Anything else on the shortlist would have been a better choice. It is a black mark on the Hugos, and on Worldcon.

Although it received the fewest votes that year because of its limited distribution, The Capture might have been an interesting winner. A deeply fannish work, only shown at SFF conventions, it was a slideshow presentation (later self-published as a graphic novel) written by Robert Asprin and illustrated by Phil Foglio. It tells the story of a group of science fiction fans who are abducted by aliens. Filled with nerdy references, in-jokes about frequent Worldcon attendees, and deep-cut references about SFF, this isn’t a work that would appeal to everyone.

Illustration from The Capture by Phil Foglio. 
There is enduring value to fan history for this
work to be more accessible to readers.
(Image by Phil Foglio via Merrill Collection)

But it’s also quite charming. The art is terrific, and the writing is snappier than any of us had expected. The denouement — in which the fans are so annoying that the aliens decide to give up and send them back to Earth — is just … genre appropriate.

It’s not easy to find a copy of The Capture today. We were only able to access it because one of the members of our cinema club flew 2,700 kilometers to Toronto and visited the Merrill Collection. As far as we can ascertain there are only three libraries in North America that have a copy. There is also one copy available for purchase in New Jersey. Given that it is a work with enduring cultural and historical value to fandom, but which has little to no commercial value, we would urge Phil Foglio and the estate of Robert Asprin to allow the Fanac Fan History Project the permission to host an online copy of the booklet, and perhaps a recording of the original slide presentation.

One of the more interesting speculative trends in the history of Best Dramatic Presentations is how often Hugo voters seem to be able to notice an up-and-coming filmmaker before the rest of the world does. In 1976, they recognized the work of John Carpenter, long before he went on to direct any of his classic movies. Dark Star — which began as Carpenter’s student project while at the University of Southern California — is an odd, rambling movie.

After the end of the moon landings, it became 
possible to imagine outer space as ... boring.
(Image via IMDB)

Despite a microscopically low budget, a tiny cast, and some exceptionally silly special effects, there’s a lot to like in Dark Star. The story of a blue-collar crew of a star ship tasked with destroying rogue celestial objects, it's a comedic portrayal of the boredom of long-term space missions. The movie drifts aimlessly between one misadventure and the next; someone’s alien space pet becomes a threat. Later, they get caught up in a space storm. Some of these scenes work exceptionally well — particularly attempts to negotiate with a malfunctioning artificially intelligent bomb — though others fall flat. The movie almost has too many ideas (most of which would later be developed by the screenwriters into more commercially successful movies like Alien).

The highest-grossing science fiction movie of the year had been the ultraviolent commentary on sports culture Rollerball. Directed by Canadian cinema legend Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof), the movie depicts a corporate-dominated dystopian future in which a bloody sport called Rollerball is used to distract the masses from larger societal inequities. At the beginning of the movie, the unquestioned greatest Rollerball player of all time Jonathan E. (James Caan), is pressured by his corporate overlords to retire after the upcoming championship, and begins to question the system that has enriched him.

All of this is a great premise for an action movie; and there’s a lot that works well in Rollerball. The set-piece sports scenes are first-rate, some of the performances are excellent, and the worldbuilding is interesting. But the suggestions of an anticapitalist message are never fully developed; viewers never learn why Jonathan is being asked to quit the sport, his relationship with his former wife Ella is never explained, and the final Rollerball match ends up feeling somewhat pointless.

The effect of concussions caused by Rollerball 
need to be studied, as too many Rollerball stars
seem to end up as Fox News talking heads.
(Image via Variety)

Of all the movies on the Hugo Shortlist in 1976, one stands out for its cultural impact and enduring appeal: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Dialogue including gems like, “Strange women lying in ponds and distributing swords is no basis for a system of government” may be the greatest analysis of Arthurian legend ever written.

Comedies age more quickly than most other forms of cinema, but of the 1970s humorous works that received Hugo Award nominations, it’s Holy Grail that seems to have stood the test of time best. Some elements may have been sapped of their wit through endless repetition by fans, but much of it still hits its mark.

What’s sometimes overlooked is that this is also possibly the best-filmed and most lush production that the Monty Python crew ever put together. The animated segments offer us Terry Gilliam at his best, while with the live-action portions Terry Jones created provide artful shots that are edited together with panache. The result is a movie that visually reminded us of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, or John Boorman’s Zardoz.

It is interesting to note that Monty Python and the Holy Grail took second in the balloting, only being eliminated in the fourth-round. The major complaint that contemporaneous fans had about Holy Grail was that it was “barely SFF.”

At the ceremony, as was the norm, nobody from the team behind the Hugo-winning movie attended the ceremony. Shockingly, not even Harlan Ellison was there to accept the award. It was left to Ellison collaborator Edward Bryant to accept it on behalf of the production team. He noted, “There has been an ongoing controversy over the awards for dramatic achievement ... because so many times in the past, it seems the award has gone to frankly people who don’t appreciate the award.”

Viewing and writing almost five decades later, we’d suggest that perhaps it is better to give an award to someone who doesn’t appreciate it, than to celebrate something as reprehensible as A Boy And His Dog.