- The Monkey's Uncle
"The Monkey's Uncle" is a 1965
Walt Disney production starringTommy Kirk as genius college student Merlin Jones andAnnette Funicello as Jennifer, his girlfriend. The title refers to a chimpanzee named Stanley, Merlin's legal "nephew" (a legal arrangement resulting from an experiment to raise Stanley as a human); Stanley otherwise has little relevance to the plot. Jones invents a man-powered airplane and asleep-learning system. Funicello also sings the title song backed byThe Beach Boys and written by theSherman Brothers . The song was covered in 2006 byDevo 2.0 on the music CD Disneymania, Volume 4.This was Tommy Kirk's last film for Walt Disney. It's a sequel to the 1964 film "
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones ".Storyline
A small college is told that a wealthy man (played by
Arthur O'Connell ) will give a large donation, but he has a strange request — he challenges the school to build a man-powered flying machine. If they succeed by a certain date, they get the donation, otherwise it will go to a rival school.Merlin Jones (Kirk) designs a lightweight airplane, powered by a propeller driven by bicycle pedals. Recognizing that even his football-jock friends won't be strong enough for such a feat, he develops a strength elixir (based on adrenaline), which should give the power that a man would need to get off the ground.
To get the jocks' support, he creates "an honest way to cheat," adapting the recently-discovered sleep-learning method to help them pass a particularly hard history course. Once the jocks are asleep, a timer starts a
phonograph album , with the sound of Jennifer reading their lessons to them. This backfires in class, however — asked to give an oral report, the jocks speak, but Jennifer's voice comes out! Eventually this all works out in the students' favor (of course).Jones gets their help, and the great day comes. The pilot drinks the elixir, then pedals off into the sky, winning the contest. Unfortunately, the "wealthy donor" is last seen fleeing from men in white coats, who want to take him back to the local mental hospital.
External links
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDdlnUkEkuo&feature=related Annette Discusses The Monkey's Uncle]
*imdb title|id=0059462|title=The Monkey's Uncle
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