THAT DARN CAT (1965) / THE LOVE BUG (1968)

Dean Jones seems largely forgotten today, partly because he was typecast as a square, clean-cut, handsome, wholesome guy, like a TV sitcom dad. Even in the fairly smutty sex farce UNDER THE YUM-YUM TREE he comes off as sweetly innocent. Another reason may be that his fame in the 1960s and 70s was due to his work in a string of fairly average live-action Disney movies which are mostly not well remembered today. Coincidentally, I saw two of Jones' Disney movies in one week's time. The first, THAT DARN CAT (1965), was also the last of six Disney films to feature the young Hayley Mills (years later, she would appear in a few Parent Trap sequels). It was based on an adult comic thriller novel called Undercover Cat and was adapted by Disney and its director Robert Stevenson to be more family-friendly. Mills and her older sister (Dorothy Provine) are living by themselves while their folks are on vacation. The family cat, named DC, for Darn Cat—in the book, Damn Cat—has the nighttime run of the suburban neighborhood, and soon his path crosses that of two bank robbers (Neville Brand and Frank Gorshin) who are in hiding with a teller they've kidnapped (Grayson Hall who was Dr. Julia Hoffman on Dark Shadows). Hall manages to scratch "help" on the back of her wrist watch and put it around DC's neck. Mills sees it and, putting two and two together (rather too quickly to believe), calls the FBI who sends out handsome, clean-cut Dean Jones to see if Mills is onto something. Soon, a gaggle of FBI men are tailing the cat all over the neighborhood. Causing problems are Roddy McDowell, the mama's boy boyfriend of Provine, and nosy neighbor lady Elsa Lanchester, whose husband (William Demarest) tries to rein her in—think the Kravitzs of TV's Bewitched. Mills and Jones are fun, and have a good working chemistry, to the point where I wondered if they might wind up a couple despite their fifteen-year age gap (honestly, she was 19 playing a high school student but could have passed for 21, and he was 34 but could pass for late 20s). Mills has a doofus boyfriend (Tom Lowell) whose only passions in life are sandwiches and surf movies, and the film pairs off Jones and Provine in the end, despite a distinct lack of connection between the two. But, let's face it, the real reason to watch the film is the Siamese cat (or cats, apparently) playing DC. I'm not sure if it's good training or lucky camera shots, but the cat is the appealing star of the show, whether he's trotting around the neighborhood, jumping over fences, taunting a dog, or just napping on a bed. The humor is surprisingly non-juvenile—in fact, the movie as a whole doesn't quite feel like it's aimed at kids—the kidnappers form a plan to do away with their hostage though they don't get to pull it off. I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would. Pictured above are Jones, Mills, and DC.

THE LOVE BUG (1968) was the last live-action film with which Walt Disney was directly involved, and it was the first Disney live-action film after MARY POPPINS to become a big hit. It's also the exception to the Dean Jones rule I mention above, as it is still fondly remembered with a sequel produced as late as 2005. Jones is a race car driver on the verge of quitting his profession who gets "adopted" by an old VW Bug which gets him to keep racing, even taking on the villainous David Tomlinson in a crazy climactic race. The car also seems to push him into a romantic entanglement with Michele Lee, a former employee of Tomlinson's. Buddy Hackett plays Jones' roommate who verges on being a hippieish mystic, and the cast includes Benson Fong (Tommy Chan in several Charlie Chan movies), TV actors Joe Flynn and Joe E. Ross. The car, named Herbie, never speaks but the non-CGI effects are pulled off fairly well and Herbie is established as a full-fledged character. Unlike most of the earlier Disney films, this is a kid-free kids' movie. It was a huge hit and spawned sequels, and kept Dean Jones (who had already played five Disney leads) in place as a Disney go-to lead for several years. Jones and Lee are good, if never really convincing as a couple. Hackett is no more irritating than usual (the exception to his irritating roles being Marcellus in THE MUSIC MAN). I'd never seen this film until now and the concept of the car, real and not animated or CGI, as a actual character seemed crazily surreal to me, a reaction I probably wouldn't have had if I'd seen it when I was 11. Other Dean Jones movies I've reviewed include ANY WEDNESDAY and TWO ON A GUILLOTINE. [Disney +]