Prince is the family dog of The Robesons, and you will never meet a closer couple. They are so simpatico, they could be brother and sister. Oh, wait, they ARE brother and sister.
In Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs (1991), “Mommy” and “Daddy” Robeson are a pair of slumlords who want to tear down the low income housing they own and put up condominiums, where “clean people” can live who will pay their rent on time. The charming couple are played by Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, who played a completely different creepy couple in the television series Twin Peaks. Here, they are the latest in a line of incestuous entrepreneurs beginning with the original owners of the Robeson Funeral Home, with each succeeding generation getting greedier and crazier than the one before.
Prince is their loyal and beloved dog. He even has his own doggie-door access to the labyrinthine catacombs between the walls of their funeral parlor home. While he’s surely menacing and gets more than just a nibble of would-be burglar Leroy (Ving Rhames), Prince isn’t technically a killer. He is horribly complicit in his owners’ murderous activities, more than happy to accept scraps from their own cannibalistic larder.
Please join us for the rest of these infamous “Dog Days of Summer” as we count down
“A Dozen Diabolical Dogs”.
Honorable Mention: Precious
Purely from the way this scene from The Silence of the Lambs is shot, it looks like Precious is taunting her owner’s prisoner, Catherine Martin. “Yes she will, Precious. She’ll get the hose.” Still, there’s no reason to believe there is anything remotely malicious about the poodle, and <SPOILER ALERT>, she even leaves the dungeon in the arms of the rescued woman. I’d like to think Precious had a happy, healthy rest of her life, but you have to wonder if she ended up in the care of Ms. Martin and if that would really be such a good idea.
Oh, and this is just too strange not to share. It’s not very obscure, admittedly, but I *do* love the recasting of “Precious”.
