56 Years Ago, Disney’s Forgotten Sci-fi Franchise Officially Began (With a Fan-Favorite Actor in the Lead)

The Walt Disney Company may be best known for the animated movies that they released in the 1940s and 1950s, but as we know, their ambitions grew beyond that and into live-action movies. Disney’s push into live-action movies delivered plenty of classics, like Old Yeller, The Parent Trap, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Swiss Family Robinson. Even though the cream always rises to the top, and some of these are bolstered by the franchises getting a boost from the Disney parks, the history of Disney’s feature films contains far more titles than one might expect, including entire franchises that have been on ice for decades.

56 years ago, in December of 1969 (official accounts are disputed on the exact release date), Disney’s Buena Vista Distribution released their final movie of the 1960s, an original science fiction film for the whole family, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. The fourth Disney movie to star none other than Kurt Russell, this unassuming little movie not only has the best title for a film that we’ve heard in ages, but also actually kick-started an entire franchise for Disney that carried on for two more movies (and a remake).

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The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes Is a Classic Disney Sci-fi Movie

By modern standards, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is an incredibly quaint movie. Set against the backdrop of Medfield College (more on that later), it tells the story of Dexter Riley (Russell), a young student who is at odds with the administration of the school. Hopeful that they’ll buy them a new computer, they elect not to, prompting Dexter and his pals to ask local entrepreneur A. J. Arno (Cesar Romero of Batman fame) to donate the computer he has to the campus. Arno says no, as it’s revealed he uses the computer to amass a fortune through gambling. One night, when Dexter is repairing a piece of the computer, he’s soaking wet from the storm outside, and a spark from the computer sends a shock through his body, turning him into a living computer capable of speaking every language and solving complex math equations with ease.

After acing an exam in minutes that should have taken him almost two hours, the team at the college suspects something is up with Dexter, letting him confess to what occurred the night before with the computer. They have a doctor examine him, resulting in sight gags like a brain scan that reveals beeping lights and knobs not unlike the computer itself; it’s hilarious. Dexter immediately becomes a national celebrity, with a parade thrown in his honor and meeting delegates from the UN. Medfield uses his smarts to boost their standing in the world by having him compete on a television quiz show to win some money.

For science fiction fans, unfortunately, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes largely squanders its genre premise halfway through the film. Having gotten as much juice as it can out of Dexter knowing everything he possibly can, the hook loses steam, and Dexter himself loses his abilities after getting concussed (seriously). In the end, the game show is won and A.J. Arno’s gambling ring is broken up, but that’s hardly the end of Dexter Riley’s adventures and Medfield College.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes Started a Franchise

Three years after The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Kurt Russell would return to the role of Dexter Riley with Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, a sequel where, while still studying at Medfield College, Riley develops an invisibility formula. Three years after that, in 1975, Russell starred as Riley for the final time in The Strongest Man in the World, which goes in the exact direction you expect. To paint a picture of how close this series was to the Kurt Russell that fans know and love, he starred as Dexter Riley for the last time just six years before he appeared as Snake Plissken in Escape from New York.

Funny enough, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and its sequels actually have connectivity to two other Disney movies, as the Medfield College backdrop predates the first movie by several years. The location actually originated in The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel, Son of Flubber. Furthermore, the film would also spawn a TV movie remake in 1995 starring Kirk Cameron in the Dexter Riley role and with none other than Peyton Reed (Marvel’s Ant-Man) behind the camera in his directorial debut.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Disney has given the world much more than just animated movie classics and now live-action remakes of those classics. Across the decades of films they’ve produced are plenty of hidden gems that not only scratch a genre itch but are noteworthy in Hollywood history for the careers they started. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes may not be the most memorable Disney movie out there, but it has a distinct place in their catalogue, and we may not have Kurt Russell without it.