As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
When you think Stephen King, you think of his supernatural horror stories. But Cujo stands out from the rest. What if King went for a more realistic approach to horror?
- Imagine you're being trapped in a broken-down car, with a rabid St. Bernard lurking around. Meanwhile, your four-year old son is going into seizures and heat strokes.
- The three most particularly terrifying scenes post-rabies infection, are when the titular dog mauls his owner and the neighbor, when he takes a bite out of the mom while she and her son are trapped in the car, and the penultimate scene when, having gotten back up from a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown inflicted by the mom with a baseball bat moments earlier, he shows up unexpectedly just before he dies via gunshot inflicted to the head. Yep, Paranoia Fuel aplenty.
- The above mentioned beating she delivers to Cujo is also pretty nightmarish, as she savagely clubs the dog's face in with the bat until the skull breaks open. And when she realizes her son has died, she attacks Cujo's corpse until his brains spill out. It's implied this was because she was starting to become rabid herself, of course this isn't how rabies works in real life.
- It's a small moment, but there is one scene in the book where Donna chances a look out the driver's side window, only to be face to face with a deranged Cujo. It plays way too well to the fear of looking out a window only to see someone looking in at you.
- The scene where Cujo becomes infected with rabies. He's chasing a rabbit in a bright field and tries to scare the rabbit out of a bat's nest, causing a bat to bite Cujo in self defense. It's like a peaceful dream that slowly turns into a nightmare and you can really see how dark Stephen King's mind was when he was writing the story. In the novel itself, it's even depicted as a bit of a Tear Jerker — King wrote from Cujo's perspective, showing Cujo's self-loathing for getting bitten, and the dog's deep fear that his owners would be angry with him and call him a bad dog.
- George Bannerman's death in the novel is very graphic. The poor man is literally ripped into by Cujo and has his entrails ripped out. He tries to stumble towards his pistol, literally holding onto his intestines until Cujo attacks him again. Yeesh. And as if that weren't enough, we get a marvelous Wham Line from Bannerman's perspective as he and Cujo grapple.Bannerman: Hello Frank. It's you isn't it? Was Hell too hot for you?
- In-Universe, the Red Razberry Zingers fiasco.
