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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Herbie Rides Again

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Herbie Rides Again

On the rare occasions that Walt Disney allowed sequels to his live-action features, they tended to feel less like continuations and more like extensions. Son Of Flubber came about because gags intended for The Absent-Minded Professor were cut during the scripting stage. Davy Crockett and Merlin Jones were both TV productions that ended up on the big screen and they feel like it. But when writer/producer Bill Walsh and director Robert Stevenson decided to bring back The Love Bug in Herbie Rides Again, they were obliged to mix things up a bit.

If there’s a definitive oral history on the making of the Herbie movies out there, I haven’t found it yet. As a result, I’ll be speculating a bit more than I’d like on the background of Herbie Rides Again. I apologize if I’m completely off-base on anything. But I think it’s fair to say that Disney wanted to make a proper sequel to The Love Bug with stars Dean Jones, Buddy Hackett and Michele Lee. I don’t know if Hackett and Lee were approached but Jones evidently was. In an interview with the Herbie fansite Herbiemania, Jones says he didn’t think the script for Herbie Rides Again was up to the standards of the original. He’s not wrong.

With Jones taking a hard pass and Hackett and Lee either turning it down or not even being asked to return, Walsh had to find another thread to connect Herbie Rides Again to The Love Bug. Naturally, he turned to Helen Hayes, the First Lady of American Theatre. This was not her first exposure to Disney. Her son, James MacArthur, had been a Disney star from 1958 to 1960 and Hayes herself made a cameo appearance in his mountain-climbing movie Third Man On The Mountain. Hayes began enjoying a late career resurgence around 1970 when she won an Oscar for her role in Airport. She wouldn’t have been the first person I’d have thought of to star opposite a sentient VW Bug but I guess it works.

Hayes plays Mrs. Steinmetz, the aunt of Buddy Hackett’s Tennessee Steinmetz (again, not the first person I would think of). Tennessee is off in Tibet on some sort of spiritual quest with his guru and Jones’ Jim Douglas has abandoned Herbie to race cars in Europe, leaving Mrs. Steinmetz alone in the old firehouse with Herbie and a couple other pieces of living machinery, an orchestrion and a decommissioned cable car named Old No. 22.

So far, none of this makes much sense. I don’t buy the idea that Jim Douglas would head to Europe without Herbie, especially given what happens in later Herbie movies. The Love Bug spent a lot of time establishing what a sensitive flower Herbie can be. The car tried to commit suicide when he thought Jim didn’t like him anymore. Herbie should probably be in therapy instead of taking a little old lady on weekly trips to the market. But this is Herbie Rides Again, not a Bergman movie. Best to let it go.

Like Jim Douglas and Tennessee Steinmetz, bad guy Peter Thorndyke (David Tomlinson) sits this one out. Instead, Walsh and Stevenson bring back Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn), the Flubber-coveting villain from The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel. Hawk has done well since leaving Medfield for the Bay Area. He’s now a super-rich industrialist with plans to construct the world’s tallest skyscraper. Maybe Hawk should give some pointers to Medfield’s current adversary, A.J. Arno. That’s right, Herbie Rides Again connects to the Flubber movies which themselves connect to the Dexter Riley movies. The shared DisneyVerse is a vast and complicated place.

Walsh and Stevenson still needed a pair of romantic leads to fill in for Jones and Lee. Stefanie Powers from The Boatniks takes leading lady duties. This would be her last Disney movie. After this, she continued as a go-to guest star on dozens of TV shows before landing the role she’d become most famous for on Hart To Hart opposite Robert Wagner in 1979. She still acts from time to time, so it’s possible she could pop up in this column again.

The male lead was Ken Berry, a song-and-dance man who’d become a popular sitcom star on shows like F Troop and Mayberry R.F.D. I had remembered Berry starring in a ton of Disney movies throughout the 1970s but he’ll actually only be in this column once more. But he was all over television during that time, popping up on The Carol Burnett Show, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and lots more.

Herbie Rides Again opens with a montage of stock footage depicting the demolition of various old buildings as Alonso Hawk watches and gleefully participates in their destruction from the safety of his limo. After the opening credits, we find ourselves in Rome where Hawk’s in the back of a taxi (driven by Disney regular Vito Scotti) fantasizing about destroying the Coliseum to make way for a shopping center. You might be thinking, “Oh, so the movie takes place in Italy?” Not at all. It’s literally just one scene with no explanation why we’re there and then Hawk’s right back in San Francisco.

These slapdash opening minutes accurately set the tone for what follows. None of this footage matches. The rear-projection work placing Hawk in Rome is some of the least convincing effects work you’ll ever witness. If you’re feeling charitable, you can take this as a sign that the movie will be more free-wheeling and anachronistic than its predecessor. If not, you can read it as the filmmakers admitting they do not care about this project. Honestly, both interpretations are correct.

Hawk’s plan to dominate the San Francisco skyline has run into a major snag: Mrs. Steinmetz, who refuses to leave the firehouse standing in the way. I love that an employee lifts the enormous model of Hawk’s building to reveal a little firehouse model hiding beneath it. Anyway, none of Hawk’s high-priced lawyers (most of whom are familiar Disney faces) have been able to get Mrs. Steinmetz to play ball. When Hawk’s milquetoast nephew, Willoughby Whitfield (Berry), shows up fresh out of law school, he hires him on the spot and sends him off to deal with the old lady.

Willoughby is pretty sure Mrs. Steinmetz is off her rocker when she starts talking to Herbie and Old No. 22. Just as he’s getting ready to have her committed, a pretty flight attendant named Nicole (Powers) turns up. Nicole was Mrs. Steinmetz’s neighbor until Hawk tore down her apartment building and left her homeless. Mrs. Steinmetz took her in and now Nicole affectionately calls her “Grandma”. Thanks to her history with Hawk, Nicole immediately sizes up Willoughby as an enemy and punches him in the face.

Before Nicole can do any more damage, Willoughby pleads his case. The neighborhood looks like a war zone, the firehouse is falling apart and the crazy old lady talks to her car. Nicole can’t do anything about those first two points but decides to clear up that last one by taking Willoughby for a ride in Herbie. You can probably guess how that goes, except you can’t because Herbie takes them to some kind of Renaissance Fair to participate in a joust/game of chicken. Wait, was Herbie Rides Again the secret inspiration behind George A. Romero’s Knightriders?

The upshot of all this is Willoughby decides he wants nothing to do with his uncle’s shady dealings and Mrs. Steinmetz decides Nicole and Willoughby have crazy-hot chemistry. Willoughby screws up his courage to confront Hawk face-to-face but chickens out when he hears his uncle’s latest apoplectic tirade. Instead, he quits over the phone, dons a fake beard as a disguise and runs to the airport.

Hawk decides to take care of things himself. For whatever reason, he’s figured out that Herbie is the key to this whole thing and steals it (sorry, him…I’m not 100% clear on Herbie’s preferred pronouns). Then he makes the mistake of insulting Herbie and all bets are off. Herbie takes control and creates a huge traffic nightmare before unceremoniously dumping Hawk on the sidewalk outside his office.

Now Hawk tasks his lawyers with getting the car but Herbie has taken Mrs. Steinmetz out shopping. Mrs. Steinmetz calmly reviews her shopping list while Herbie deals with the lawyers, driving through a fancy hotel, climbing to the top of a parking garage and leaping between buildings, even driving straight up the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. Once again, Disney weirdly cheaps out on some of the least special special effects on film. The Golden Gate gag is particularly bad. The scale is all wrong and somehow Hawk’s secretary (Elaine Devry) is able to see what’s happening from miles away.

Herbie and Mrs. Steinmetz make it home to find Nicole, who ran into Willoughby at the airport and convinced him to help fight Hawk. Mrs. S. sees an opportunity for a little matchmaking and sends the potential lovebirds off to the store, ordering Herbie to keep them occupied for a little while. They end up at the beach. While love blossoms and Herbie cavorts in the sand like an excited puppy, Hawk’s chauffeur (Ivor Barry) bribes an old-timey fisherman (Arthur Space) to block the only access road. With the young folks and that meddling car out of the picture, Hawk intends on swooping in to pack up all of Mrs. Steinmetz’s possessions.

Hawk’s diversion doesn’t work for long. Finding the road blocked, Herbie simply drives out to the end of a pier, leaps in and navigates back to shore the long way, much to the astonishment of both sharks and surfers. Returning to their empty home, our undaunted heroes decide to retrieve their stolen goods from Hawk’s warehouse. They get everything back and Herbie helps them escape a pair of hapless security guards (including recurring player Norm Grabowski in his final Disney appearance). On the way home, Old No. 22 picks up a drunk but flirtatious passenger, Mr. Judson (John McIntire, last seen in The Light In The Forest, giving the funniest performance in the whole movie).

The next day, Mrs. Steinmetz goes to meet with Hawk face-to-face. Willoughby follows her and arrives just in time to see her drive Herbie onto an enormous window-washers’ platform. They make it to the 28th floor where Hawk is on the phone with a demolition guy named Loostgarten (Chuck McCann, later a very prolific voice actor including Duckworth on the series DuckTales). Hawk’s done messing around and wants Loostgarten to knock the firehouse down tonight, permit or no permit.

Of course you realize there’s a reason Stevenson introduced this comically oversized window-washer, right? Sure enough, an incensed Mrs. Steinmetz hits Hawk full-force with a stream of suds. Once the office is full of bubbles, Herbie drives in and chases Hawk through the halls and out onto the window ledge. Before Herbie can outright murder Hawk, Mrs. Steinmetz threatens to trade him in if he doesn’t calm down.

Back home, Nicole and Willoughby concoct a plan. Willoughby impersonates his uncle and gets Loostgarten on the phone. Telling him there’s been a change of plans, Willoughby gives Loostgarten Hawk’s home address instead. That night, Hawk is understandably having trouble sleeping, suffering PTSD-induced nightmares where he’s chased by Demon-Herbies with razor-sharp teeth or he’s Kong atop the Empire State Building menaced by Flying Herbies trying to shoot him down with motor oil. Loostgarten wakes him up, calling to verify the new address, at which point Hawk gives the OK to demolish his own house.

The next morning, Hawk finally admits defeat and announces he’s turned over a new leaf. Willoughby and Nicole go to Fisherman’s Wharf for a celebratory dinner but Mrs. Steinmetz stays in, partly to give the young folks some space but mostly to entertain her own gentleman caller, Mr. Judson. It’s a good thing they stayed behind. Hawk was, of course, lying through his teeth and has assembled an army of bulldozers and wrecking balls to bring Hell to Mrs. Steinmetz’s front door.

While Mrs. Steinmetz and Judson hold the fort, Herbie manages to break through the front line and fetch Nicole and Willoughby. Speeding back to the firehouse, Herbie uses his psychic Herbie powers or something to mobilize an entire armada of sentient, driverless Volkswagen Beetles. They come from garages, from junkyards, from driveways, from drive-in movies (still carrying the seemingly frozen young lovers in the backseat). The Bugs thwart the bad guys and Hawk runs into the Traffic Commissioner again, who hauls him off to either jail or an insane asylum. Willoughby and Nicole end up getting married because why wouldn’t they and everyone lives happily ever after. Except, perhaps, for San Francisco’s many Volkswagen owners whose cars mysteriously vanished one night and never returned.

So yeah, Herbie Rides Again is not what you could call a good movie. I wouldn’t even say it’s a particularly well-made movie. That being said, I had some fun with it. Without any returning characters from The Love Bug, Stevenson and Walsh couldn’t continue Herbie’s story in any meaningful way. And let’s face it, does anyone really want Herbie’s story continued in a “meaningful” way? So Stevenson and Walsh went another direction and cranked up the zaniness to eleven. On that score, it delivers.

Even so, being weird and goofy can only carry a movie so far. It would be really nice if more of that weirdness was intentional. I don’t think Stevenson intended for the lousy chroma-key effects to be an ironic commentary on the illusion of cinema. They’re just cheap, lazy effects. The relationship between Mrs. Steinmetz and Mr. Judson is genuinely cute and funny. I’d love it if the movie focused more on them or invested Willoughby and Nicole with half as much personality. In the end, I felt like I enjoyed Herbie Rides Again in spite of everyone’s efforts, not because of them.

Despite its shortcomings, audiences were ready to welcome Herbie back. Herbie Rides Again came out in England first before opening in America on June 6, 1974. Most critics seemed to feel the same way I do about the movie. They admitted it wasn’t very good but they weren’t mad about it. It went on to become Disney’s highest-grossing film of the year, just barely missing the top ten. Helen Hayes even got a Golden Globe nomination for the movie, possibly just for emerging with her dignity intact.

It’s hard to say whether or not Walt Disney would have greenlit any sequels to The Love Bug. On the one hand, it was an enormous hit. But that might actually have protected it in Walt’s mind. He might have felt a sequel would cheapen whatever magic made The Love Bug special. But with Walt gone, the studio couldn’t afford to leave money on the table. After Herbie Rides Again proved The Love Bug’s success was no fluke, you knew full well that Herbie would return.

VERDICT: It’s a Disney Plus for the Demon-Herbies alone but it’s not great.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

The shared cinematic universe is usually considered a relatively recent concept even though studios like Universal and Toho started hosting all-star monster jamborees decades ago. Even Disney dropped some shared universe Easter eggs in their early days, like bringing a live-action Bambi into 1957’s Perri. With The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Disney went back to Medfield College, birthplace of Flubber in The Absent-Minded Professor.

A few things have changed at dear old Medfield since the Flubber days. Fred MacMurray’s Professor Brainard has evidently retired, presumably flush with Flubber cash. The great character actor William Schallert is the new all-purpose teacher, Professor Quigley. (I assume Medfield must have additional faculty but these movies only ever seem to focus on one.) The college also has a new dean, Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn, last seen as David Tomlinson’s flunky in The Love Bug).

But perhaps the biggest difference between The Absent-Minded Professor and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is its protagonist. The Flubber movies treated the student body like an afterthought, nameless bodies to toss around the basketball court and the football field, keeping the focus on Professor Brainard. Computer shares a little DNA with The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones (which surprisingly did not take place at Medfield) by promoting a student to the lead role. But unlike Merlin Jones, Dexter Riley is no brainiac inventor. As played by Kurt Russell, Dexter is the typical all-American underachiever, more interested in having a good (albeit G-rated) time than academics.

Russell had worked steadily since his Disney debut in Follow Me, Boys! three years earlier. In addition to his feature appearances, he’d done plenty of TV including guest shots on non-Disney shows like Daniel Boone with former Davy Crockett, Fess Parker. Now 18, Russell had earned the chance to show what he could do with a starring role.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Medfield’s dire financial straits. Alonzo P. Hawk may not be around anymore to call in the school’s loan but Medfield is still hemorrhaging money. By the way, Keenan Wynn will eventually be back in this column as Alonzo P. Hawk, bringing another Disney franchise into the Medfield-verse.

During a budget meeting with the board of regents, Professor Quigley argues that the school desperately needs to get with the times and buy a computer. Unfortunately, the budget is stretched thin and Dean Higgins shoots down the request. Besides, the regents believe modernization is overrated. Higgins is more concerned with weeding out Medfield’s worst students, a long list that includes Dexter and his friends. Quigley sticks up for them. He believes they’re good kids, just in need of a little extra motivation.

Those troublemaking kids were smart enough to plant a listening device in the conference room and they’ve overheard the whole thing. Wanting to do something nice for Quigley, they decide to go visit Dexter’s old boss, tycoon A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero, who had previously appeared in a few episodes of Disney’s Zorro). He seems to be in possession of the only computer in town and the kids hope to persuade him to donate it to the school.

Arno is surprisingly open to the idea except for one thing. He already donates $20,000 a year to Medfield, so he isn’t about to toss in a $10,000 computer on top of that. But if the school is willing to forego their annual gift, maybe they can work something out. This sounds like a good deal to the kids (obviously not math majors) and they set to work crating up the tons of components that make up a late-60s computer.

It’s surprising that Arno is so willing to part with the computer because we soon find out he keeps it in a secret room behind a hidden panel. The computer’s primary function is keeping track of Arno’s many illegal gambling clubs. Now you might think that Arno would need a valuable piece of equipment like that. At the very least, perhaps he should consider erasing all the incriminating evidence stored in the computer’s memory banks. Nope! Take it away, boys! He just saved 20,000 big ones and he’s a happy man.

Anyway, the computer gets set up at Medfield but Quigley’s demonstration hits a snag when a part shorts out. Dexter volunteers to make the 70-mile drive for a replacement, even though he should really be studying for the upcoming standardized test. Later that night, he gets back to the lab during a torrential rainstorm. He foolishly decides to switch out the part while he’s dripping wet and standing in a small lake of rainwater. As you might expect, Dexter is zapped with about a zillion volts of electricity and instantly dies.

The end.

Quad poster for The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

No, no, of course not. The computer dies but Dexter seems just fine. Sure, he wakes up his roommate later that night, beeping electronically and reciting the coded data about Arno’s gambling joints. And yeah, when his friend asks him about it, Dexter has no idea what he’s talking about. But still, he’s fine.

Dean Higgins and Professor Quigley don’t have much time to be upset about the $20,000 boondoggle because the next day is the big standardized test. Students have an hour to complete the test and, in the opposite of a pep talk, are told that nobody in the history of Medfield has ever finished it. Dexter is surprised to find himself whipping through the whole thing in less than five minutes. Quigley and Higgins are even more surprised to discover that he aced it, getting the first perfect score in the history of the college.

A thorough medical check-up solves the mystery. As so often happens, the accident caused Dexter to absorb the properties of the computer. A quick glimpse inside his ear reveals flashing lights, spinning magnetic tape and all the other hallmarks of a 1969 computer. As long as he doesn’t run out of punch cards, Dexter Riley is the smartest man on Earth.

Quick to capitalize on his human computer, Dean Higgins organizes a nationwide tour for Dexter. As his fame grows, he drifts apart from his girlfriend, Annie (Debbie Paine), and buddies like Pete Oatzel (Frank Webb, who was tragically killed in a car accident just a few years later at the age of 26). He also attracts the attention of Dean Collingsgood (Alan Hewitt, seen most recently in The Horse In The Gray Flannel Suit) who hopes to lure Dexter over to Medfield’s arch-rival, State University.

Dexter’s new celebrity status does not pass unnoticed by Arno, either. He may have lost his computer but thinks having a human computer on his payroll sounds even better, especially after Dexter consistently picks winners in horse races. Arno sends his flunky, Chillie Walsh (Richard Bakalayan, who played a similar gangster role in Never A Dull Moment), to give Dexter a taste of the good life. Unfortunately, the club they visit is raided by the cops and Dexter winds up in jail, along with Walsh and the two Deans, who’d been following him.

When Dexter’s friends pool their money to bail him out, Dexter realizes what a heel he’s become. He turns down Arno’s offer and reaffirms his loyalty to Medfield by captaining a quiz bowl team alongside three of his dimmest friends. Dexter leads them to victory and a championship match against State. One Day At A Time’s future Schneider, Pat Harrington, hosts the quiz bowl and Spinal Tap’s future John “Stumpy” Pepys, Ed Begley Jr., makes his big screen debut as one of the State students. We’ll be seeing Begley again in this column.

On one of his College Knowledge appearances, Dexter correctly answers a question with “Applejack”. That just so happens to be Arno’s code name for his illegal businesses, prompting Dexter to start rattling off information about Arno’s gambling joints on live TV. Arno shuts down the exposed locations and sends Walsh to kidnap Dexter the night before the finals.

Pete and Annie track him down and come up with an elaborate plan to rescue him. Disguised as house painters (Merlin Jones used a similar scheme…it seems house painters were given carte blanche to go wherever they pleased in the 60s), the kids search the building and manage to smuggle him out in a trunk. There’s a big chase back to the TV studio with gallon after gallon of paint thrown at the pursuing gangsters. Dexter rejoins his team but the rough handling in the trunk seems to have knocked a few circuits loose. His answers get slower and slower until he finally crashes completely.

Dexter wakes up in time for the final question about the geographic center of the United States but has no idea what the answer could be. He’s back to being a normal, below-average student. The team has been relying on Dexter for so long that everyone’s shocked when Schuyler (Michael McGreevey) realizes he actually knows the answer. He has family in Lebanon, Kansas, and that is the correct response. Medfield wins the day and Arno and his goons end up in jail.

I vaguely remember watching and enjoying the Dexter Riley movies as a kid, so I was looking forward to revisiting this one. Unfortunately, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was not the comedic powerhouse I remembered. So far, I’ve been making fun of the movie’s leaps of logic and Mariana Trench-sized plot holes but they’re not really the problem. The issue is that most of this just isn’t that funny.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was the first screenplay by longtime Disney employee Joseph L. McEveety. McEveety joined the studio in 1957 as an assistant director, working on movies like Moon Pilot, Mary Poppins and, yes, Merlin Jones. He knew the Disney house style backward and forward but comedy wasn’t exactly in his blood. Previous Disney comedies relied heavily on slapstick but Computer’s story doesn’t allow for any until its madcap finale. As a result, the first half can get pretty dull and repetitive. The movie desperately needs more verbal humor or, at the very least, a few jokes.

Director Robert Butler also made his Disney feature debut with The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Butler had directed a ton of TV, including Star Trek’s original pilot, “The Cage”, and multiple episodes of shows like The Untouchables, Batman, The Fugitive, and countless others. For Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color, he and Norman Tokar codirected Kilroy, a four-part serial, in 1965. Earlier in 1969, he directed Kurt Russell in the three-part Secret Of Boyne Castle, released theatrically overseas as Guns In The Heather. He knows exactly what’s expected of him here and keeps the tone light and the story moving as best he can. But even so, the movie gets bogged down often enough that it’s hard to not get impatient.

Like most Disney comedies, the action is preceded by a colorful animated title sequence and a peppy title song. Visual effects artist Alan Maley (who went on to win an Oscar for his work on a movie we’ll be getting to soon) designed the abstract titles and they’re pretty cool. The song, by Robert F. Brunner and Bruce Belland, isn’t quite as successful. To be fair, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is an unwieldy title. Even the Sherman brothers would have a hard time making it work in a song. Brunner’s and Belland’s solution was basically to shout the whole thing as quickly as humanly possible. It’s one of the more aggressively unpleasant Disney songs.

The only reason any of this works on any level is thanks to Kurt Russell. In his earlier Disney appearances, Russell definitely had something but nobody had quite figured out what his strengths were yet. Now we begin to see the charismatic movie star he would become. Russell always brings a little twinkle of fun to every role but here, he’s given his first opportunity to go all in on a broad comedic part. When Dexter’s central processor starts to crash, Russell fully commits to the gag. That’s a genuinely funny scene. I only wish the movie had more like it.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was Disney’s last theatrical release of the 1960s. It was a decently sized hit, particularly in relation to its cost, and most critics gave it a pass. The movie certainly did well enough to inspire Disney to bring Dexter Riley and friends back for more wacky adventures at Medfield.

TV Promo Art for The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1995)

Disney also produced a TV remake in 1995 with Kirk Cameron stepping into Dexter’s tennis shoes (a style of footwear Kurt Russell never dons once, by the by). That version had an interesting supporting cast, including comedian Larry Miller as the Dean, Jeff Garlin and Eddie Deezen as FBI agents, Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson hisownself) and Disney veteran Dean Jones playing against type as Miller’s rival Dean. Peyton Reed, who would eventually return to the Disney fold via Marvel’s Ant-Man, made his feature debut as director.

Revisiting The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was a good lesson in tempering your expectations for childhood favorites. I had high hopes for this one. And while it wasn’t a complete waste of time, it definitely wasn’t as good as I’d remembered. They’ll have plenty more chances to impress us, though. Practically everybody involved will be back in this column in some way, shape or form.

VERDICT: Not quite a Disney Minus but nowhere near a Disney Plus, this is a Disney Neutral.

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