Poochinski (1990)

 

Director: Will Mackenzie

Screenplay: David Kirschner, Brian Levant and Lon Diamond

Cast: Peter Boyle as Stanley Poochinski; George Newbern as Det. Robert McKay; Amy Yasbeck as Frannie Reynolds; Frank McRae as Capt. Ed Martin; Brian Haley as Sgt. Shriver

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

That's when you were making collars, not wearing one!

Poochinski is pretty infamous - the TV pilot where character actor Peter Boyle, playing a scruffy ill kempt cop, is killed only for his soul to transmigrate into the body of a smelly bulldog he found and befriended. People have written about this twenty one minute or so television pilot before I have, until the cows come home but I will follow them in adding my two pence. To think this was just once an unsold pilot which produced and co-written by David Kirschner, producer of the Child's Play horror series, nowadays when it has gained its infamy is charmingly weird. It was once an NBC premiere shown just before a re-run of Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story (1987) on the taped copy I saw, a Farah Fawcett starring mini-series (made into a TV movie cut) based on a real debutante and socialite in American history. In the midst of a night's screening, when the version I watched was taped off television, you might have encountered an attempt to cash in a spade of cop with dog partner films by having the dog also talk.

Boyle, with as varied a career as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1978) to Alex Cox's Death and the Compass (1992), plays a slob of a cop named Stanley Poochinski. He eats hotdogs, is crude and orders pizza in the midst of an important stake out of an ATM machine robber, yet nonetheless has a record of catching notorious criminals which defends him in the eyes of his peers, such as the North Hill Strangler. One person who defends him even for the crime of heavy flatulence to his cop partner includes Frank McRae, famous for playing police chiefs, playing a police chief here and probably not batting an eye to the weirdness on display for all he has gone through. One of the roles he had includes Last Action Hero (1993) where strange cop partner double teams was an extended joke, so Poochinski's existence adds more to that gag in hindsight for me.

Even when Poochinski threatens children with his gun, it is to rescue a stray bulldog from their torment and only after one of the boys, who only looks ten years old or so, threaten him with a flick knife. In the midst of his newfound friendship with said bulldog, Poochinski is killed only to occupy the body of the bulldog in a spiritual cock-up. Where the dog's spirit goes we never learn in this curious example of transmigration, leaving his already frustrated younger partner George Newbern now having to live with him in his apartment as a wacky comedy duo. This is ironic considering a couple of years later Newbern would voice the titular Theodore Rex in the 1996 film of the same name, a sentient dinosaur cop teaming up with Whoopi Goldberg playing the human detective herself.

For me personally, no idea is too stupid or dumb or offensive if done properly - the problem is that most of these ideas are not done well, and thus the three descriptions above are acceptable to use when the tone is misfired. If you are careful and can take the risk, any strange idea can work but it depends on presentation, tone and the quality of the material. I openly admit I have developed a guilty pleasure to Poochinski as a pilot, wishing this managed to get one season at least to see how in the blue hell it would have succeed if ever. As a conventional cop show from the era with one of your main cast members being either acted by real dogs or an animatronic for talking (or singing) scenes, this would have been fascinating to witness, especially as Cop Rock (1990), a musical cop series which was still incredibly serious as a show, managed to get a full season the same year. Probably the safest way to have deal with the material would have been animated, this pilot giving me flashbacks to an obscure Disney animated show I saw as a kid, Bonkers (1993-4), about an anthropomorphic bobcat and former cartoon star now becoming a cop and having a human partner to solve crimes with together. It would have been helped at least because of the self reflective, quirky era of nineties animation, where the animators started making shows as much for adults as for themselves and could have these odd premises.

Or, and this is the huge reason I think Poochinski would have been dreadful as a series, it should have not been a conventional cop show from the era which is more interested in silly jokes than playing to the actual weirdness of this premise, even if it still failed as a show. The film is co-written by Brian Levant, a producer/writer/producer of the likes of Jingle All the Way (1996) and Snow Dogs (2002). I will not bury them or suggest he is the biggest influence on the show, but they are broad family friendly programming which Poochinski is clearly trying for itself, even it is has a bit of sex humour including Poochinksi being a perverted dog, nuzzling into a female staff members chest when being cuddled. Moments show how odd this could have been, especially as people can actually hear Poochinski (convincing a man in an elevator, without seeing him, to push a button), and there is a dark (furry) underbelly, when Poochinski laments about having to accept his new animal form, leaving a girl he once loved and slowly picking up the behaviour of a dog.

This pilot is too short to really get anywhere with the premise, and a large portion of it is a romantic comedy between Newbern and a widow living in his apartment, with her cute kid, he is smitten on. Even if that leads to the joke of his trying to train Poochinski with his gun for wrecking his bedroom, it still suggests most of the show would have been very broad humour rather than really embrace this premise, of being a traditional cop show but with a weird touch, one which would have disrupted the conventions greatly. It was clearly meant to capitalise Turner & Hooch (1989) and K-9 (1989), two films inexplicably released on the year of my birth which partnered cops (Tom Hanks and Jim Belushi) with dogs for cute hijinks, Poochinski playing for innocent laughs despite its few adult winks to the camera. In particular, whilst those two theatrical films had actual trained dogs, Poochinski in reincarnated form is played by an animatronic bulldog for large portions of it which many will find freakish, the kind you would expect from a weirdo series cancelled after one season rather than its soft natured slapstick.

Technically, this is a perfunctory pilot¹, solidly made by the director of A Hobo's Christmas (1987), spending most of its length despite its premise, Poochinski tracking down the ATM robber who killed him once, as a comedy of manners as his younger partner puts up with his furry partner. Arguably, if this had gone with the strangeness of the premise, Poochinski could have worked if just as an even weirder cultural item for us to have dug up decades later. Most of my enjoyment of the pilot as it has grown is more a "what if", accepting that this stands as something with not a lot to go for it in reality. This is likely why this has developed a cult status, because of feeling like a strange premise cooked up after a hangover.

 

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1) The only touch of note is the music by Andy Summers. Yes, the guitarist from The Police, who went on to compose music for films after the band, which adds another surreal touch to this pilot. This is something I only learnt of for this review, just to mention that one of the guitar licks he uses is clearly "borrowed" from Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters and was worth mentioning.