So clearly, everyone was shitting their pants over rabies on the daily. That's a very big part of why Cujo worked so well, and why we got stuff like The Mad Death. There was also Dogs, Devil Dog, The Pack, Play Dead, and Monster Dog, because sometimes they forgot about the rabies and just focused on mean dogs. We even got White Dog, a vicious canine movie that's about racism and is also in the Criterion Collection. It says a lot about how big this trend was that we not only got B-movies but also prestige films that you can find in the back of a Barnes & Noble.
We still have evil dog movies, but they're rarely about rabies and usually about wolves. This is likely because no one is really afraid of rabies anymore. Hell, they made an entire episode of The Office about how a modern fear of rabies is pretty foolish. When the biggest voice for a problem is Michael Scott, you know it's kind of a non-issue.