Cujo

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Joe Camber's dog, Cujo, is infected with rabies from a bat bite. Cujo is a St. Bernard. Yeah. Written in 1981 by Stephen King, and adapted into a film starring Dee Wallace in 1983.

Tropes used in Cujo include:

• Angry Guard Dog: Subverted with Cujo- he attacks people because of rabies, not because he was bred that way.
• Asshole Victim: Joe.
• Beware of Vicious Dog: Although, to be fair, nobody knew he'd become vicious.
• Big Friendly Dog: Cujo was one, before he got rabies.
  • Also a genuine problem in the making of the film because they simply could not get the St. Bernard playing him to act aggressively - they had to replace him with a cunningly disguised Rottweiler for several crucial scenes, and tape his tail to his leg so he didn't wag it constantly. Aaww.
• Catch Phrase: An in-story example. Vic Trenton, who works in advertising, along with his partner, Roger, creates a character called "The Sharp Cereal Professor", who becames hugely popular. His catchphrase is "Nope, nothing wrong here".
• Domestic Abuser: Joe Camber.
• Eye Scream: Donna kills Cujo by thrusting the broken handle of a baseball bat through his eye socket.
• The Film of the Book
• Heat Wave: The story takes place during one, which leads to Tad's death.
• Infant Immortality: Averted in the book. Played straight in the movie.
• Midlife Crisis Car: Steve Kemp refers to this phenomenon as "sports car menopause".
• My Car Hates Me: Donna and Tad are trapped on the Camber's farm, because her car (a Ford Pinto) wouldn't start (actually she went there to get it fixed).
• Police Are Useless: Sheriff Bannerman lasts about 30 seconds with Cujo, and he is by far the most effective cop in the book.
• Spared by the Adaptation - Tad, in the movie.
• Things That Go Bump in the Night: The monster in Tad's closet.
• Tragic Villain: Cujo. He's shown to suffer terribly from rabies, and he attacks people because he believes that they are responsible for his pain. At the end of the book, it's written: "It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. [...] He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor."
  • He was also possibly influenced by the ghost of a previous Stephen King villain...
  • Not to mention his brief encounter with Randall Flagg.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Acording to King's auto-biography, this entire book. There are worse things to do on a bender...
• Your Cheating Heart: Donna has had an affair with Steve Kemp and broke it off. This comes back to haunt her when a rejected Kemp vandalizes the house and wipes off a very important message on the blackboard that delayed her and Tad being found - contributing to Tad's death in the book.
• Xenofiction: Parts of the book are told from the perspective of Cujo. They show him to be a Tragic Villain.