The Misadventures of Merlin Jones *** (1964, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Leon Ames) – Classic Movie Review 11,785

Director Robert Stevenson’s 1964 hit American science-fiction comedy film The Misadventures of Merlin Jones is Walt Disney Productions’ better prequel to The Monkey’s Uncle (made the following year).

Tommy Kirk is pleasing as the Midvale College student crackpot Merlin Jones, who experiments with mind-reading, hypnotism and sleep-learning on a chimp, and devises a flying machine, leading to run-ins with the local judge, Judge Holmsby (Leon Ames).

Annette Funicello.

The mildly entertaining monkey business and scientific slapstick is mainly for the young. Annette Funicello gives a sweet and amusing performance as Merlin’s girlfriend Jennifer, and sings the film’s title song (written by the Sherman Brothers), accompanied by Disneyland’s harmony quartet, The Yachtsmen.

Stuart Erwin, Alan Hewitt, Connie Gilchrist, and Dallas McKennon co-star.

The screenplay is by Alfred Lewis Levitt and Helen Levitt, but the original screenplay credits to Tom August and Helen August were a blacklist pseudonym. The screen story is by Bill Walsh.

Filming took place in January 1963 and it was released on 11 February 1964.

The film grossed more than $4 million in North America, surprising even Walt Disney Productions and the 1965 sequel was greenlit.

The cast are Tommy Kirk as Merlin Jones, Annette Funicello as Jennifer, Leon Ames as Judge Holmsby/ Lex Fortas, Stuart Erwin as Police Captain Loomis, Alan Hewitt as Professor Shattuck, Connie Gilchrist as Mrs Gossett, Dallas McKennon as Detective Hutchins, and Norm Grabowski as Norman.

While filming The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in 1963, Kirk, then aged 21, was personally fired by Walt Disney. Kirk recalled: ‘The studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. Certain people were growing less and less friendly. In 1963, Disney let me go. But Walt asked me to return for the final Merlin Jones movie, The Monkey’s Uncle, because the Jones films had been moneymakers for the studio.’

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,785

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Tommy Kirk plays Merlin Jones.