The Wetback Hound is a 1957 short film directed by Janet and Larry Lansburgh.
The film focuses on a hound dog named Paco. Paco lives with some Mexican ranchers in Sonora, where he is employed as a hunting dog who hunts mountain lions. Mountain lions are a scourge against ranchers, but Paco has a hard problem focusing on his work. Instead, Paco keeps running off and chasing after harmless deer.
One day a mountain lion escapes when Paco gets distracted by a deer and the rest of the pack follows Paco. The abuse that Paco takes from his masters leads him to run away. Eventually Paco winds up crossing a river into the United States—hence the racist name of the movie—where he is adopted by some American ranchers, and makes a surprising new friend.
Tropes:
- All Deserts Have Cacti: Justified in that the first part of the film is in Sonora, where saguaro cacti are found. Naturally the movie has to have a shot of Paco making his way through some cacti.
- Interspecies Adoption: Paco befriends a baby deer whose mother was killed by a mountain lion. He protects the fawn as it grows, even carrying over a bottle of formula in his teeth for the baby to drink from.
- Narrator: There's no dialogue, only a narrator who tells the story of Paco the hound dog.
- Time Skip: A four-month time skip finds the baby fawn having lost its white spots and beginning to grow antlers.
- Title Drop: 1950s racism, as Pablo is crossing over into the United States."Paco doesn't know it, but he's about to become a wetback!"
- Xenofiction: The story of a hound dog that befriends and protects a baby deer.
