The Monkey’s Uncle | 1965

87 min. | color | Buena Vista | released: august 18, 1965

Disney’s follow-up to the previous year’s “Misadventures of Merlin Jones” has Merlin (Tommy Kirk) recruited by the Mu Mu fraternity in order to help Midvale College’s star football players pass their exams. Merlin hooks electrodes to their heads and plays tutorial records to them while they sleep. It works so well, the college accuses the lunkhead football players, and Merlin Jones, of cheating.

In the second half of the movie, Merlin builds a man-powered flying machine in order to acquire a $10 million endowment for Midvale College, and incidentally, to save the football team.

Both storylines are thin at best, and get resolved fairly anticlimactically. Annette, accompanied by The Beach Boys, sings the terrific title song, which is available on the “Bikini Beach” soundtrack.