A ChucksConnection Film Review

Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran wear black Converse "Chuck Taylor" All Stars in the film.

The Shaggy Dog

The Shaggy Dog is a good example of the typical family movie produced by Disney in the fifties. In the film you see the usual cast of Disney actors including Fred MacMurray, Jean Hagen, and Mickey Mouse Club stalwarts Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Tim Considine, and Kevin Corcoran. We see the archetype Disney southern California suburban family, with the somewhat absentminded father, devoted stay-at-home mother, and kids who provide most of the plot action. A dog factors into the plot, and even the villains, although sinister, behave politely and pleasantly most of the time.

The plot centers around Wilby Daniels (Tommy Kirk), a high school aged kid mostly interested in scientific experiments, and not very astute with girls. His best friend Buzz Miller (Tim Considine) is a ladies man, but perennially broke, so he is always borrowing money from Wilby to finance his dates. Buzz's girl friend is Allison (Annette Funicello), but when a new good looking French girl, Franceska Andrassy (Roberta Shore), moves into the neighborhood, Buzz schemes to date her while not trying to offend Allison, and involves Wilby (unknowingly) in his plans. Wilby's dad Wilson (Fred MacMurray) has been with the postal service for twenty years and has a real phobia about dogs. He will not let his younger son Moochie (Kevin Corcoran) have one, and when he sees a dog on their property he chases it off with a gun. He is also furious at Wilby for launching a rocket inside their house and blowing a hole through the roof. So Wilby and Moochie are told to get rid of all of their stuff for scientific experiments.

The plot begins to unfold when both Wilby and Buzz, enamored with Franceska, volunteer to bring some art work that her dad, a noted art historian, is working on. When the three arrive at the museum, Buzz quickly loses Wilby so he can concentrate on Franceska. This is not hard to do, as Wilby, fascinated by the museum, wanders into a new exhibit room on the Borgias being set up by Professor Plumcutt (Cecil Kellaway). The professor tells Wilby about the power and spells the Borgias were capable of exercising, including making a person transmute back and forth into a dog until the spell is broken by an act of bravery. As Wilby is leaving the exhibit, he knocks over a tray of Borgia jewelry, and a ring from the tray gets caught in the cuff of his pants. When he finds the ring and places it on his finger, he activates the ancient spell, which causes him to change into a sheepdog and back again, although he never knows when the change will happen. The sheepdog that he changes into happens to be Franceska's dog, and so when he is in this state, he is treated as their dog. Because he is hanging around Franceska's house a lot as a dog, he overhears her father plotting with another man and the family servant to steal vital US missile plans. Dr. Mikhail Andrassy (Alexander Scourby) is only an art historian on the surface; in reality he is a spy for a foreign country. Wilby's dilemma is how to get the information out to the authorities, when the only person who knows who he actually is is his younger brother, Moochie, and because he is in the shape of a dog, doesn't know how to approach his dog-hating father. The rest of the story revolves around their efforts to stop the bad guys, with a lot of humorous dog bits on the way.

While both Wilby Daniels and his younger brother Moochie are seen wearing black high top chucks throughout most of the movie, they are hard to spot as chucks because both brothers wear them with black strings, and in the one real closeup, it appears that the ankle patch has been somehow touched up to obscure it. Of course this was an era when athletic logos were not considered a big deal, and probably Disney didn't want to give Converse a free screen plug. The best chucks scene is when Wilby looks down and discovers the Borgia ring in the cuff of his pants, and you can see that he really is wearing chucks.

ChucksConnection Rating: MPAA Rating: G

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