2 min read
Joe Schmieg is an American actor best known for his role as the Police Sergeant in Ghostbusters (1984), and for a notable casting footnote: he and the future Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund were briefly cast as a pair of bums in a Ghostbusters scene that was later cut entirely.1
Join the community
Free accounts post in the forum, upload to the gallery, edit the wiki, and follow your favorite franchises. No credit card. No catch.
Schmieg's known screen credits span two films.2 In 1984 he appeared in Ghostbusters as a Police Sergeant.3 In 1986 he appeared in Wise Guys, Brian De Palma's crime comedy starring Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo, in the role of a Race Track Bettor.4
Detailed biographical information, including birth date and place, is not documented in publicly available sources.
Schmieg appears in Chapter 20: Keymaster as the unnamed Police Sergeant who arrests Louis Tully after Louis is found roaming the streets while possessed by Vinz Clortho. The Sergeant and his officers are unsure what to do with their bizarre detainee: Bellevue Hospital refuses to take him and the Sergeant is reluctant to put him in a cell. He decides to contact the Ghostbusters. Janine Melnitz answers the firehouse door and brings out Egon Spengler, who runs a sweep with the P.K.E. Meter and takes Louis from the Sergeant's custody.3
The Police Sergeant's collar pin places him with the 27th Precinct. There is no 27th Precinct in real life, though the designation is famously associated with the Law and Order franchise. In the August 5, 1983 script draft, the Sergeant states it took him and seven officers to physically restrain the possessed Louis. In the novelization Ghostbusters: The Supernatural Spectacular, the character is named Rosenberg and is assigned to the 24th Precinct.5
During pre-production, director Ivan Reitman cast Schmieg and Robert Englund as a pair of bums in a scene that was ultimately cut before filming was complete.1 When the scene was dropped, Schmieg was reassigned to the Police Sergeant role. Englund, meanwhile, departed the production and went on to play Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the role that defined his career. The Fandom corpus renders Englund's name as "Robert Edlund," but all contextual details confirm this refers to Robert Englund.
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
Greene, James, Jr. (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever. Lyons Press, Essex CT USA. ISBN 9781493048243. p. 48. ↩ ↩2
IMDb, "Joe Schmieg" (nm0773356), accessed 2026-06-13. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0773356/ ↩
Ghostbusters (1984), Chapter 20: Keymaster. Columbia Pictures. ↩ ↩2
IMDb, "Wise Guys (1986) full credits," accessed 2026-06-13. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092226/fullcredits/ ↩
Mueller, Richard (August 1985). Ghostbusters: The Supernatural Spectacular. Tor Books, New York NY USA. ISBN 0812585984. ↩
