Cujo

Cujo is the eponymous Saint Bernard from Stephen King's 1981 novel Cujo and the 1983 Lewis Teague film adaptation. The novel depicts a previously gentle family dog who, after being bitten by a rabid bat in the Maine countryside, slowly descends into rabies-induced madness over the course of several days — eventually trapping a young mother and her four-year-old son in their broken-down Ford Pinto in the Camber farmyard for nearly three days of summer heat. The novel is largely psychological horror; the dog itself is portrayed sympathetically as a victim of disease, not malice.

Both the novel and film are credited with creating a counter-image to the gentle, family-friendly Saint Bernard archetype that had dominated American media (Beethoven being the obvious foil released nine years later). King has stated that Cujo was inspired by a real Saint Bernard he encountered in 1977 while taking his motorcycle for repair — the dog growled at him, and the mechanic told King the dog was named "Gonzo" but had bitten people.

The film used five Saint Bernards plus a Labrador-Saint mix and one mechanical dog head for the final transformation scenes. The lead Saint Bernard — Daddy — was the primary on-camera dog; trainer Karl Lewis Miller (the same trainer who later worked on Beethoven, in an interesting career arc) handled the production.