8 Disturbing Stephen King Book Moments That Were Cut From The Films

Cujo - the story of a good dog gone bad after a brush with rabies - ends with a climactic battle between woman and beast as protagonist Donna fights off the crazed canine with a baseball bat.

It's a similar endgame in both the book and the 1983 movie. The rabid mutt goes for the mother while her young son, Tad, takes cover in the backseat of a car.

Donna eventually defeats Cujo, with the bat in the book and a gun in the film, but in the aftermath of the encounter realises that Tad has died of dehydration in the heat of the vehicle.

This was such a needlessly depressing footnote to the story that director Lewis Teague altered the ending, granting the boy a full recovery following medical attention.