We all have that one mysterious, weird, mystifying thing we remember seeing on television as kids and would do anything to track down, just to prove it existed. For me, it was a TV movie called Save The Dog that ran on The Wonderful World Of Disney one evening in 1989 during a stay at my grandparents' house. I didn't choose this, it chose me. I'd have to watch whatever they had on, or whatever they had running while they weren't in the room, and that evening it was one of the craziest things I had ever seen up to that time.
You might expect that Save The Dog is about saving a dog, and you would be right, but that's only the base premise. While our lead character (played by Laverne & Shirley's Cindy Williams) is attempting to save a dog, something else happens to her, which leads to something else, and then something ELSE, and then before you know it she's barrelling down the hill handcuffed to a runaway garbage dumpster while being chased by the police. At that point it was barely about saving the dog anymore. And after it was over I was like "What was THAT?" and it stuck in my mind for years. Decades even.
Depending on how popular they were, or were not, TV movies can be hard to find. We now have this streaming service that makes MOST of Disney's library accessible through a monthly fee, but not nearly everything. The number of network TV movies that made it to the Disney+ library is incredibly small. Add to this, there are hundreds of episodes of The Wonderful World Of Disney and many of them only aired once.
It was only recently that a Discord chat with fellow VHS collectors led me on the path to someone who had a recording of Save The Dog. One download later the long epic search was over. I can finally prove to you that Save The Dog was real! I was not insane! Here it all is!
It's no wonder it was so hard to find, because as it turns out, Save The Dog was from the brief era when NBC had cut The Wonderful World of Disney to just an hour in length. The vast majority of movies for television that Disney produced during this period have never been seen again because they don't count as "movies" in any other format. This was only forty-three minutes long but my memories had it longer.
Williams plays Becky Dale, a struggling actress in LA who's trying to land a gig as the spokeswoman for "Doggie Din Quik," a new brand of dog food sold in disposable bowls. Her rehearsal goes flawlessly in front of her own dog, but when she tries the same lines in front of ad executive Oliver Bishop (Odd Couple's Tony Randall), she makes a complete mess of it. She can't pull the tab open, so she yanks it, which ends up spilling the wet dog chow all over the carpet.
Fortunately for Becky, that was exactly what Mr. Bishop was looking for! He had been seeing professional, polished, plastic performances all day and had become sick of it. He wanted a "real" woman, someone with flaws that felt honest, and Becky just fit the bill. He doesn't say it right then, however. He waits until a phone call that evening, and only AFTER Becky has told her agent she's officially giving up acting and going back to that job "with computers."
Once informed, she quickly changes her mind and her mood brightens. "I was just...acting! Because...I'M AN ACTRESS!"
Becky only got to be happy for a few hours. The next morning she wakes up to find her 11-year-old AARP-eligible dog is just lying there, unresponsive. She lifts his leg but he doesn't react. And his nose is warm! She rushes him to the veteranarian, where she's told the dog needs a life-saving operation and it will cost $700 in 1989 money. Because he's a nice person he can bring that down to $358.77, but because he's not nice ENOUGH to bill her later, he expects the payment in full within a day. OR THE DOG DIES.
To be fair here, the vet is not portrayed as a meanie. He's cast as a friend of Becky's who has helped her out before. Apparently the dog needs to go to a more adequate eperation room and it's those people that would expect the money up front. But even still, it's incredibly harsh to hold a dog's health and survival hostage like this. Yet it gets the plot moving. Stakes set!
Becky is now driving around town in a panic, wondering where she is supposed to get the money. She passes some kind of telegram service that's hiring, and whispers "thank you" to whomever she worships. The place is called "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Deliveries," which is the ONE element of corporate synergy in this entire mini-movie. Were it not for this, I wouldn't have remembered this was a Disney movie and the search would've been even harder.
The lady at the front desk doesn't look sympathetic, but concedes that this kind of job doesn't require much experience and will take any panicky woman that runs through their door. EXCEPT if they're an actress. She has an aversion to actors for some reason that only makes sense if you're plotting out a TV movie and need an excuse for extra tension. So Becky just fibs "No" and she's handed a form.
There's one condition that Becky insists on, however: she has to be paid in advance, because she needs the money TODAY. The lady says those aren't the rules and she isn't in a position to bend them. Becky loses it and wails that her dog's life is in her hands, sobbing so loud that the lady finally caves and agrees to do something under the table.
This delivery company operates in a strange way. Becky is told she has to pick a letter up from one residence, get a signature from them, deliver the letter to another residence, get a signature from THEM, and return both signatures to that location by 5 PM. Becky is confident she can do all that in an hour and have time left over to film the dog food commercial. She has to weair a goofy pair of wings on her head and put a giant shoe on her car; much more humiliating than an Uber sticker.
Becky drives up to one of those boxy Hollywood Hills dwellings and is met with a woman who looks just as upset as she is. She's splitting with luggage in tow and sending her fiance a Dear John letter. She actually can't make up her mind whether to go through with it and turns around twice before Becky gets fed up and tells her "FORGET HIM, he's a WIMP." The woman swallows her confidence, hands Becky the letter, signs the form and leaves.
The job's 33% done already...perhaps Becky really could get this done -- nope nope, the moment she backs out of the driveway, some other car slams into her front bumper. When she gets out to trade insurance info, she's greeted with a misogynist chud in a tight shirt who growls "Of course it was a WOMAN driver! I knew the moment it happened there had to be some DAME behind the wheel." Becky gets so mad at him, she gets back into her car and peels off without giving him the info.
It wasn't a collision that did much visible damage, but it seems to have shaken something loose. Becky's car starts smoking and conks out right at the top of a hill. She runs off on foot to a gas station to get some oil (don't see what good that'll do) but returns to find the tow truck has already arrived and has hitched up the vehicle. She screams at them to stop but they don't listen, so she actually jumps onto the back windshield and rides her car all the way to the towing station.
The fine is $100. If Becky could pay that she wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. She spits an unhinged rant at the manager about how they should tow more Cadillacs and Porsches because they'd be more likely to pay up. It doesn't get her car back, so she has to find some other way of delivering the letter.
She spots a kid riding a bike and begs him to
let her borrow it. "Just for a few minutes, I promise I'll
return it! It's a matter of life and death!!"
"You a cop?" the kid asks.
"No," Becky says.
"Then forget it," he says back.
He's willing to negotiate a trade. He won't accept her first
offer, the gum from her purse. But then he glances behind him and
suddenly feels more generous. His counter offer is "ten
bucks." "DEAL,"
What did the kid see? It's the little girl he just stole the bike from. When she sees Becky riding away, she squeals for her father...who happens to be a policeman!
"I'm calling in all the favors on this one," he says over the phone to the precinct. "I want that woman HAULED IN! She's Caucasian, red hair, wearing a Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah badge."
It doesn't take long for one of the cops to spot Becky, as she kind of stands out. When she's shoved into the police car, she's very confused: "It's mine, I paid ten bucks to borrow it!"
As they're driving down the main street, Becky pleads with him the way she's been pleading with everybody. "Let me deliver the letter so I can get the signature for delivering the letter so I can get the money for delivering the signature so I can give it to the vet so he can save my dog...and THEN you can arrest me, deal?" It's not a deal.
The cop suddenly gets an alert. The others are dealing with a hostage situation and they need as many men as possible! He pulls over across the street from the incident, handcuffs Becky to an empty dumpster and says he'll be right back.
Becky is never safe anywhere. As she's walking back and forth stuck to the dumpster, she accidentally knocks out the board that was keeping it from rolling down the street...so it starts doing just that. The cops don't notice. Now Becky is on the top of a dumpster barrelling down a busy street, screaming her head off, barely missing pedestrians and trees!
She slows her breathing and finally gets a chance to relax as the dumpster reaches a hill and finally slows to a stop. But that just means it starts rolling the opposite direction a moment later, and now she's screaming again. This second ride is even more chaotic than the first! She snags a rope, causing a window washer to fall. She hits a scaffold, causing a painter to tumble onto the dumpster....but she doesn't have the extra passenger for long as he leaps off when he sees she's about to hit a bus. The bus thankfully moves out of the way just in time, but Becky hits a few more things before finally, at last, coming to a permanent stop.
Meanwhile, back at the delivery agency, an unbelievable number of coincidences are about to collide, and every single one of them will make Becky's life worse. The lady has on a B-movie which happens to feature one of Becky's earlier roles. The chud from the accident comes in, because Becky's place of employment is his only lead. As he's filing a complaint, a policeman comes in and asks if the lady has seen a "Caucasian with red hair wearing a Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah badge." Becky has been racking up quite the list of felonies within the last hour or so. And then at THAT moment, ad executive Oliver Bishop comes through the door. How'd HE get there? The point is that his role in this is to point at the TV and say "that's the woman I'm looking for! She's an actress!"
The lady turns around to see Becky as a high school cheerleader running from monsters. "You don't say."
Becky is somewhere else, looking at a bus schedule. She observes her hair in the reflection and feels it's a bit unkempt. She fumbles around in her purse for a comb. The letter slips out and blows in the wind through the street. It catches on a truck tire and spins round and round as the truck drives away...and Becky chases it, yelling in its direction.
Becky eventually loses the truck, but that's okay, because the letter fell off the wheel and onto a crosswalk. But just as she notices it there, someone else picks it up, carries it to the mailbox and drops it in.
"WHAT DID YOU JUST DOOOOO??"
"I mailed your letter for you."
"NOOOOOOO!! I HAVE TO GET THAT BACK OR MY DOG WILL
DIIIIEEEEEEEE!!" she wails.
In the background, someone is phoning the police. "We've got a report of a woman attacking a mailbox...wearing a Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah badge."
A tall man with a bushy beard notices her distress. Without saying a word he takes a deep breath, grabs the mailbox and pulls it off the pole with a mighty grunt. Then he hands it to her.
Becky notices a policeman coming up the street and has to blend into the pedestrian crowd to avoid him...a bit difficult when you're carting an entire mailbox in your arms. Through darting into a building and back out another entrance, she is able to give him the slip. She does, however, run right into ad executive Oliver Bishop.
Does this make a bad impression on him? No, nothing seems to. He's the opposite of Felix from The Odd Couple -- his temper is almost nonexistent. He's been after her because he wants her to film the ad ASAP. And thanks to his visit with the delivery agency he knows about the dog. He's willing to give her the extra money after the ad is filmed, no loan required.
While riding in the passenger seat of Oliver's convertible, Becky shakes the mailbox upside-down and manages to get the letter to slip out. Is this day finally turning a corner or is a piano about to fall on her next?
Becky and Oliver enter the studio, where they're shooting several ads. Becky's isn't for a while, so she's ordered to makeup. She doesn't get there, though, because two police officers enter the area, blocking her route. She runs behind a set wall in fear, then bolts out of the building when their backs are turned. Turns out the "cops" were actually actors filming an ad for a security business.
Becky darts across the lot...where's she going to find a ride now? As luck would have it there's a driving school car idling by, waiting for the student to show up. Becky gets in, fibs about being that student, and then proceeds to drive like a maniac, freaking out the teacher. Because these were the years before GPS, she has to open a paper map while on the road, partially blocking her own view and making things even more chaotic.
Becky stops the car in front of the apartment complex she's meant to deliver the letter to. Curiously, she finds the door wide open and the room inside dark. "Uh....hello?" she says with a bit of nervousness. This could be anything, given the day she's having.
The lights go on, about twenty people pop out, they yell "SURPRISE" and then a blonde in a swimsuit jumps out of a large cake and starts dancing. She's wandered into someone's bachelor party. The question is who did she ruin the surprise for? It has to be somebody we met already, right?
Sure enough, the chud in the T-shirt appears behind her, angry about his party being ruined. Becky has his letter, but she insists he wait to read it until aftet the party and "after you've had MANY beers!" She also insists on the signature first. Feels like she's learning how to survive now. He does open the Dear John at that point and winds up sobbing on the couch, gaining no sympathy from anyone.
All Becky has to do now is get her money from the Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah lady and her dog could be saved. She arranges for them to meet in front of the vet's. The lady does show up, but she seems to be stalling while looking over Becky's shoulder. It's a setup! A cop car comes peeling out from the corner. "You're under arrest...for being an ACTOR!" the lady sneers. This aversion to actors is never explained.
Becky yelps, grabs the money she's owed from the lady's purse, jets inside the vet's and shoves the money in the doctor's face. "THERE, YOU CAN SAVE MY DOG NOW, RIGHT?? I'll be back after I make bail."
One transition later, yup, she's in prison...for the immense rap sheet she racked up between lunch and dinner. She IS about to make bail, though...ad executive Oliver Bishop really, really wants that ad to get made. He springs her and she walks outside the police station late at night to find cameras aimed at her. Yes, he's going to film it HERE. He figures her look of weariness over the events of that day will make for the most honest ad ever that will speak to the widest range of customers.
"I just had an unbelievable day because of my dog," Becky starts, unscripted. "Because I love him. I always said I'd do anything for him. Well now, I might be doing time for him but that's okay, because when I had to come through for him I did. If you have an animal you love you know what I'm talking about, you look in their eyes and you see something no one else sees. And they look in your eyes, and they see everything you ever wanted anyone to see. So when people say to me, why go through all this trouble for just a dog, well that just makes me mad, because my dog is just as important to me as anyone else I love."
She didn't mention the product, but Bishop feels she nailed it. Also, Becky learns that her dog is going to recover.
The final scene is Becky, her agent and Oliver watching the ad on TV, but she's at a park instead giving a different speech. I guess the "jail" one didn't focus test very well.
So what else can I say? Can you see why this would stick in my mind and never leave? It's not the kind of thing one can easily forget witnessing. It's gotta be one of the most stressful movies of all time and it NEVER lets up. In the great pet debate I've always leaned toward cats. I can imagine a "dog person" would not be able to make it through this, as it's pretty much their worst nightmare amplified times twelve. Woof!