Pound

I've never seen any movie like this where people represent dogs about to be put down and their characters. The movie keeps switching back and forth between the actors and the animals. The actors talk and you get a feeling for the animals.

It's sad and yet funny.

One animal starts to have a baby and another tries to have sex with another dog and the viewer gets to understand by watching the actors represent these dogs.

One dog is about to be put down and you see how nervous he gets.

One gets a different feeling for one's pet after watching this movie.

Seeing it only once at the Uniondale Mini-Cinema, Long Island home to art films and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, all I knew was that it was on a Robert Downey Sr. double feature with the classic, Putney Swope.

What I saw was a stunning, surreal demonstration of the movie screen as a stage and the actors upon it drawing you into their world. A dog pound, occupied by stray and abandoned canines, all musing about their lives, from the primped pedigree to the run-down greyhound (a masterpiece performance by Putney Swope alumni Antonio Fargas, later to be saddled with the ludicrous role of Huggy Bear the pimp in TV's Starsky & Hutch), the Dachshund (Marshall Efron, best known for Marshall Efron's Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Sunday School TV show) to a small role of a puppy played by a very young Robert Downey Jr.

You get very caught up in their tales of joy and sorrow, even their dreams of freedom before they are utterly dashed in a tear-jerking conclusion that will have you weeping in pain and wanting to rush out to your local animal shelter and adopt a pet.

The true sadness is that this film is missing in action. Locked away for who knows what reason; legal battles, ego wars, et al. This film needs to be seen again soon, before all that remember it pass away.

"Pound" may be the funniest movie ever made. So far as I know, it's not available on DVD or tape. But if you get a chance to see it, by all means do so. The usual cast of brilliant Downey character actors deliver some of the edgiest lines ever to grace the screen. As with "Putney Swope", its only drawback is that the audience is laughing so hard it may be difficult to hear the dialog.

Antonia Fargas, in a track suit, stars as The Grayhound. As he reminisces about his Florida racing days, a winner of the Tampa Tropicana ("Brang home the bacon, I did."), we see two other "dogs" furiously masturbating in a corner. One says over his shoulder, "Excuse me...but I need to give myself a quick jerk." Downey's son, Robert Downey, Jr., appears in the movie at the age of three or four, as a puppy. The brilliant dialog, delivered by a brilliant cast, make this an ideal movie for anarchists. Republicans may not get it.

See the amazing Robert Downey Sr.'s chimerical POUND, and experience the happy-sadness of a single night in a city dog-pound from a canine point-of-view.

One of the director's stronger works, POUND is a brilliantly conceptualized semi-experimental film which is well-played by the entire cast. Each performer is in the role of a dog(sans costume), written in respect to specific characteristics of their breed/type(staunch, high-flown pedigree, agreeable dim-witted domestic mutt, world-wise elder, ruffian homeless mongrel, etc.). The bizarre, obstreperous script crackles with zippy dialog and trenchant witticisms, but the thrust of the matter is the disconcerting collective trepidation of impending doom(the dogs know that some among them are at an advantage, as puppies, pure-breeds, and lost domestics are less likely to be "put down" than the age-advanced, sickly, or mongrel types). We sympathize with these characters, and share their apprehension as the clock ticks away to their potential fate.

An ingenious experiment commendably executed(if a bit stagy at points), POUND has sadly slipped through the cracks into oblivion...let's hope it soon finds its way back home.

I just want to agree with REDBEARD above -- I was at that same Uniondale Mini-Cinema screening! (and let's raise a glass to that incredible theater, that gave me my entire teen education in cinema), and haven't been able to see POUND since.

However, the GOOD (maybe GREAT) news, is that in May 2012, Criterion is releasing a boxed set with several of Robert Downey, Sr.'s films, including PUTNEY SWOPE and CHAFED ELBOWS (unfortunately, NOT including POUND or GREASER'S PALACE). At least SOME Robert Downey films are going to be out there for a whole new generation (and this older generation) to see.