Repost :: When Disney Went to College :: Kurt Russell Lives the Life of Reilly in the Medfield Universe.

There's an apocryphal story that says back in the 1960's, when producers Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff cast America's favorite Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello, for the lead in William Asher's Beach Party, the legend gushes over how Uncle Walt plumb blew a gasket and harangued American International's brass for ruining her wholesome image. Rumor also has it that Arkoff told Disney to go screw himself and allow the girl to grow up. In the end, as the fabled story continues, Arkoff did make one concession and promised Funicello would not appear in a bikini. She didn't, a two-piece, yes, but not an actual bikini. Either way, her days as Disney's golden girl were officially over. 

Now, if you jump ahead to the end of the next decade, we see the same familiar pattern with another Magic Kingdom mainstay. 

Aside from maybe Bruce Campbell's Ash, I don't think there's been a more popular, cocky, anti-hero/bad-ass icon amongst the B-Movie Brethren than Kurt Russell's Jack Burton or Snake Plissken. One wonders, however, how many of them actually realize how before he was a lean, mean, and morally suspect quipping machine our boy in question was a slightly chubby and cherubic teen idol who cut his acting teeth in a string of vanilla comedies for Walt Disney? See, the 1970s were an odd time for the Disney studios. And when they weren't making films about precious metal pooping water fowl, sentient Volkswagens, or cats from outer space, they were offering their own brand of teenage/young adult comedies, most of them set at mythical Medfield College (-- home of The Absent Minded Professor), which centered around the comical misadventures of one particular pupil: Dexter Reilly. 

In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, when our boy Reilly (Russell) is involved in a freak electrical accident, where the resultant surge in voltage super-charges his brain, he becomes a walking encyclopedia. The story begins when the always cash-strapped Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn) refuses to fund a much needed computer for Medfield's science department. But always the entrepreneur, Dexter manages to talk local business tycoon and all-around no-goodnik A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) into donating one. Arno does, a relic, en lieu of a promised $20000 contribution to the college coffers. And it's while trying to repair this temperamental contraption that Dexter gets zapped, transferring all the computer's stored data into his brain. 

A whirlwind world tour soon follows as the Dean exploits Dexter's new abilities as a windfall for the college. Of course, Dex's ego soon matches his inflated I.Q., but, this being a Disney movie and all, down comes the Clown-Hammer of Morality; and he soon sees the error of his ways and returns to his girl, Abbie (Debbie Paine), his bestest bud Schuyler (Mike McGreevy), and good old Medfield U. Of course, the school is still in dire financial straits, but a solution is found by using Dexter as a ringer in a series of collegiate quiz-bowls. Things go well until the semi-finals, when the effects of the accident appear to be wearing off, and then one of the answers, "applejack," triggers an involuntary avalanche of regurgitated names and numbers from Dexter. No one knows what to make of it -- except for Arno and his hired muscle, Cookie (Dick Bakalyan), who recognize the blathering as part of their highly illegal bookmaking operation (-- that was stored on the old computer, 'natch). So it isn't much of a surprise, then, that on the day of the finals, Dexter turns up missing. Not to worry, Annie figures it out, engineers a rescue, and then, needless to say, hijinks ensue... 

Personally, I was introduced to the Medfield Universe and its denizens on the small screen when Tennis Shoes showed up on The Wonderful World of Disney. But the sequel, Now You See Him, Now You Don't was one of the first films I remember seeing in a theater. I recall seeing all kinds of Disney fair when I was a kid, getting dropped off at the old Strand or Rivoli theaters with my siblings while my folks did whatever folks did in town when they didn't want their brood underfoot: Black Beard's Ghost, The Boatniks, The Gnome-Mobile, and an old William Castle movie about a house haunted by three ghosts, who murdered each other with meat-cleavers, which have all been expounded upon elsewhere. And we're here to talk about Dexter Reilly, anyways, right? Right. 

Okay, then, almost all of the old Medfield gang returned for Now You See Him, Now You Don't, where the rascally Reilly strikes again; this time accidentally inventing a substance that, when applied like paint, can turn things invisible (-- and can be easily removed with plain old H20). Once again, budget woes have Dean Higgins moaning to the Board of Trustees. And once again, enter A.J. Arno -- who must have beat the kidnapping and racketeering rap from the first film -- who takes over the school's debt. He claims his motives are altruistic, but Reilly and his gang don't buy it. And, using his latest invention, our hero sneaks into Arno's office to find out what he's really up to. Sure enough, Arno plans to shut the school down and turn it into a giant gambling resort. 

Then, things get kind of convoluted when they take the evidence to the Dean, whose solution is to get a grant to pay off Arno before he can foreclose on the property. And to do this, he must win a golf tournament. (Don't ask.) Win it he does, with Reilly's unseen help, but they've got bigger problems: Arno has figured out the invisibility ruse and has stolen what's left of the formula for his own nefarious purposes. More hijinks ensue... 

When viewed today, the matte F/X used to pull off the vanishing act doesn't hold up very well. But back when I was three, when Dexter sticks his fingers into the goo and pulls his hand back to reveal his missing fingers I nearly crapped out my Milk Duds, thinking they had been burned off by something caustic. 

Two years later, I was back in the same theater -- probably in the same balcony seat -- for the conclusion of the Medfield trilogy, The Strongest Man in the World, where once again, Reilly inadvertently creates a super-strength serum while mucking around the science lab. (And if you're thinking what I'm thinking at this point, yeah, I'm beginning to suspect Reilly was the illegitimate son of Ned Brainard, too.) With dollar signs flashing in his eyes, Dean Higgins wants to quickly cash in by selling the formula to Harriet Crumpley (Eve Arden) for her Crumply Crunch Breakfast cereal. His presentation is a smash, mostly for the furniture, but there's a snake lurking in the grass by the name of Harry (Dick Van Patten), who happily offers to sell the secret formula to the rival Krinkle Krunch cereal -- owned by none other than A.J. Arno. (And whatever he's paying his lawyers, it ain't enough.) Things come to a head when Crumply challenges Arno to a weightlifting competition fueled by their rival cereals. 

Of course, Arno brings in a bunch of ringers but the Medfield team has their own secret surprise -- or do they? Is Arno one step ahead of them again? And one last time, hijinks ensue ... 

Now hold on, some of you say. Wasn't there another one with a monkey? And you'd be absolutely correct. Russell was in The Barefoot Executive but that film takes place outside the Medfield Universe -- a parallel universe, to be sure, because even though it's different everything feels exactly the same. Here, Russell plays Steven Post, a lowly page at the UBC Network with big dreams that soon come to fruition when he starts picking out sure-fire hits that score high in the ratings. Flynn returns as the cranky station manager, Wilbanks, who promotes him to programming director; and John Ritter plays his nefarious nephew, Roger, who will stop at nothing to find out the secret to his rival's success; that secret being Post basing all of his programming decisions on the whim of his girlfriend's (Jennifer Scott) pet chimpanzee. Seems that whenever the monkey claps the show will be a hit, and when he blows a raspberry, the show's a flop. (Well, at least he wasn't flinging his scat at the screen.) Hijinks -- you get the picture. And if you're recalling another movie where Russell's a track star then your wires are a little crossed. That was Jan Michael Vincent in The World's Greatest Athlete. 

With that, we officially close out our slightly surreal and bluntly corny sojourn into the wild world of Dexter Reilly. And honestly, sometimes corn is what you crave and this franchise delivers it straight from the cob. Disney mainstay Joseph McEveety produced and provided all the scripts, Robert Butler did all the directing, and Hans Metz, Eustace Lycett and Danny Lee provided the familiar looking F/X when needed. All in all it's G-rated harmless, and Russell does nothing to embarrass himself and was already showing some of the smooth charisma and snarky bravado that would soon become his stock in trade. So how did Russell go from clean-cut Dexter Riley to the less than scrupulous Rudy Russo in Used Cars? Could it be that the very same year The Strongest Man in the World came out he played infamous mass-murderer Charles Whitman in The Deadly Tower? Oh yeah, I think Uncle Walt's head just took a spin in the cryogenic chamber. Goodbye Dexter Reilly. Hello Snake Plissken. 

Other points of interest:

The newspaper ads for Now You See Him, 

Now You Don't at the Morgue.
 

Netflix'd :: Clearing Out the Instant Que :: Crusading Reporters, Serial Killing, and the Fine Art of Mubers :: Phillip Borsos' The Mean Season (1985)

Of all the film's dedicated to my chosen profession of working at a daily newspaper, my favorite and, I think, the best is Richard Brooks' Deadline - USA, where crusading editor Humphrey Bogart, despite the paper's imminent demise, puts the screws to the local gangster, bound and determined to bring him down for murder before the last edition goes to press. And amongst a plethora of great scenes is the one where the dedicated staff hold a wake for their soon to be dearly departed paper, culminating in Jim Backus relating a conversation about how the brass-nutted publisher asked for the difference between a journalist and a reporter before he would hire him. A journalist, he says, makes himself the hero of the story, while a reporter serves only as a witness; a lesson Kurt Russell's character should have taken to heart in another tale of murder and newsprint with The Mean Season.


Based on In the Heat of the Summer, a crackerjack novel by John Katzenbach, the film set the template for many a serial-murder flick to come. Here, Russell plays a Miami-based reporter who inadvertently becomes the mouthpiece for a serial killer looking for bigger headlines. And as the stakes get higher, along with the body count, Russell soon comes to a realization that he is no longer reporting the news but is the news. And he kind of likes it. Thus, drawing too much media attention to himself, the Numbers Killer (played by a completely whackadoodle Richard Jordan) is quite upset by this, and, in true narcissistic fashion, decides to punish our hero by kidnapping his girlfriend, played by Mariel Hemingway, as his next victim, which leads to the main reason for this post.


For, as the local papers do a patented sit-n-spin on the movie screen, up pops one of the greatest gaffes in the history of newspaper cinema:

Now, now. Cut him some slack, that headline was written
under duress. In other words, FIRE THE COPY EDITOR!

Sadly, due to budget cuts, in a lot of papers, a copy editor is luxury no longer afforded. And when I finally noticed the typo on this latest viewing (-- for the record, that should be kidnapping with two p's), I laughed pretty hard but was also extremely sympathetic for many reasons. Mainly, because I'm terrible speller and my typing skills aren't all that hot. Also, in my sixteen years working in the composing department, meaning, basically, I make sure everything prints right side up, I've seen golfers shit 3 under par to take second place (-- which makes one wonder what they had to shit out to win), grandfather cocks for sale, teams promising to lay their opponents as hard as they can slip by and see print, and one inexplicable headline with the word "muber" in it, which proved so inexplicable that any error caught since is now affectionately dubbed just that: a muber.


Now, this gaffe in no way, shape or form, ruins the movie watching experience of The Mean Season. Far from it. Russell is great, as always, equaled by Jordan, and buoyed by a strong supporting cast, including a young Andy Garcia and a vintage Richard Bradford as the detectives charged with mucking through the grisly crime scenes to try and catch this psycho, with their only real lead being Russell's link with the killer, meaning all they can do is wait for more bodies and hope the killer eventually slips up and reveals himself. As I said before, a lot of this is tired, worn thin, and needling toward cliche these days, but it all had to start somewhere, right?


The Mean Season (1985) David Foster Productions :: Orion Pictures / P: David Foster, Lawrence Turman / AP: Steve Perry / D: Phillip Borsos / W: Leon Piedmont, John Katzenbach (novel) / C: Frank Tidy / E: Duwayne Dunham / M: Lalo Schifrin / S: Kurt Russell, Mariel Hemingway, Richard Jordan, Richard Masur, Joe Pantoliano, Andy Garcia, Richard Bradford