Pound (1970)

Pound (USA, 1970) 92 min color DIR-SCR: Robert Downey. DOP: Gerald Cotts. MUSIC: Charley Cuva. CAST: Charles Dierkop, Don Calfa, Antonio Fargas, Chuck Green, Marshall Efron, Robert Downey Jr.

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Pound was distributed by United Artists after Downey made a splash with Putney Swope. Could you imagine a studio releasing a film today where humans play dogs in a pound, awaiting being “put to sleep”? Whenever the camera is from the outside of the dog pen looking in, our cast is seen as the canines they are. Once the camera is within the walls of the pen, we see the human counterparts to Man’s Best Friends. While the dogs in human form speak English, they do however exhibit canine attributes, such as copulating “doggy style” (however one “German Shepherd” promises to pull out during fornication), and even sniffing each other’s rear ends. But mostly, this dryly hilarious farce feels like a Jean-Paul Sartre play cross-pollinated with Samuel Beckett. Downey (who signed the film as as directed by “Robert Downey, a prince”) based this work on his 1961 off-off Broadway play, The Comeuppance.

Although the bulk of this film takes place in the pound (seen as an elephantine monochromatic white set a la Kubrick) it isn’t as stiflingly stagebound as one would expect. This rogue’s gallery of characters (fascinating faces that give new meaning to the old saying about how dogs resemble their masters) overact in a (typically Downey) cartoonish way, all posturing to countless old movie clichés in our collective conscious. From weird foreign languages to Dead End Kid slurring, all of this B-movie rhetoric is not for its own sake, as there are numerous scenes, which segue into familiar subplots from the late late show. Suddenly the pound setting gives way to an airport lounge as one lady and tramp say their goodbyes, the cushy interiors of a pub magically appear as the canines have dark confessions of the soul, and we even see our cast in a subway train setting! One senses these characters periodically lapse into fantasy moments to escape their impending doom. As the film progresses, these fantasies just get weirder, culminating into a bizarre dance number with such wild punk lyrics (a la Downey) as “You think you wanna die / Can’t you see you’re a lame motherfucker”! Oh yes, one of the mutts gives birth to a stuffed penguin. Ahem!

This is pure Downey all the way, with half-baked jokes to equal every gag that does work, and subplots that more appear as non-sequitors. Unfortunately, more is not done with the sniper terrorizing the city (is this to represent mankind in general indiscriminatingly killing animals?), however the police pursuit of the mad killer culminates into a Keystone Kops style chase, which correlates to the bizarre movielike fantasies within the pen. Is this meant to say that the outside world is as much a prison as the dog pound? In the beginning we see a millionaire being chauffered to a field looking for “Rodney!”, and we soon find that his beloved Rodney is a little pup in the pound. Incidentally the human form of the little dog is played by Robert Downey Jr. in his film debut.

For all those shaggy dog moments (forgive the bad pun, but Downey would’ve used it too) there are segments which do work beautifully, such as the crazy scene where burglars rob the pound of its money, but agree to pay the warden five dollars for a dog they want to take home! The casting is impeccable: the cartoonish, jowly faces and weird contortions of his cast (Lucille Rogers, Don Calfa, Charles Dierkop et al… including Elsie Downey, the director’s wife) uncannily resemble their canine counterparts… especially Antonio (“Huggy Bear”) Fargas as a poodle!

Pound has such a unique language that requires more than one visit to understand, yet for the brave, the film does reward with repeat viewings. It is a one-of-a-kind movie that is also hilarious and strangely moving.

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Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #14, extracted from an article on Robert Downey Sr. UPDATE: Sadly, Pound has never had a legitimate home video release. For a Downey retrospective held last decade, Pound had to be shown via a Betacam SP copy: the director’s own print had shrunk, thus making it unusable to thread through a projector. For now, everyone else has had to make do with a multi-generational bootleg (with timecode burn!) in order to view it. At least it’s out there somehow. Hopefully, someone can find a film print to scan to Blu-ray.