The Shaggy D.A. (1976), Disney's belated sequel to The Shaggy Dog, was made at the tail end of this steady cash cow and so in some ways the two movies function as bookends to this peculiar subgenre. The film is a tired, derivative affair with little to recommend it, one no better than similar films of its type and era -- C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979), Oh Heavenly Dog (1980). Without the Disney label, few would likely remember it today.

The title of this children's film begs an obvious question: How many 8-year-olds even know what a D.A. is? Nevertheless, that's the premise to this odd film, with Wilby Daniels (Dean Jones, inheriting Tommy Kirk's old role) now a Medfield lawyer happily married to wife Betty (Suzanne Pleshette) with a son of their own, young Brian (Shane Sinutko). After their house is robbed, Wilby decides to clean up Medfield by running for district attorney, vowing to expose the ties between incumbent D.A. "Honest" John Slade (Keenan Wynn, in shaggy toupee) and "known felon" Eddie Roschak (Vic Tayback).

However, the magical scarab ring that years before had transformed Wilby into a sheepdog whenever its Latin inscription ("Canis corpore transmuto") was read, is stolen by local thieves (Dick Bakalyan and Warren Berlinger) and eventually sold to ice cream vendor Tim (Tim Conway), who later gives it to his would-be girlfriend, pie-maker and roller-derby star Katrinka Muggelberg (Jo Anne Worley). Soon enough, just as Wilby's campaign kicks into high gear, he begins transforming into a Tim's sheepdog, Elwood. (This strange device requires that Elwood disappear completely while Wilby occupies its body.)

The Shaggy D.A. is substandard Disney slapstick driven by out-of-place political satire too adult for kids to follow yet too juvenile for adults to enjoy. Like so many Disney films from this era, the high-caliber cast of leading actors and veteran character actors are expected to carry the weak material. It's easy to appreciate the obvious effort they're putting into it, but it's just not enough.

Three times as many familiar character actors appear here than the usual Hollywood film, many in bit parts, some little more than extras. The Shaggy D.A. boasts Dick Van Patten, Ronnie Schell, Hans Conried, Richard Lane, Benny Rubin, Iris Adrian, Pat McCormick, and Herb Vigran. Liam Dunn, the funny character comedian memorable as the beleaguered judge in What's Up, Doc?, and as the unfortunate patient Gene Wilder experiments on at the beginning of Young Frankenstein, died after just one day's shooting in the part of the local dogcatcher. In the finished film John Fiedler plays the part for most of the film, but then Dunn turns up unexplained during a roller derby sequence, only to have the character reappear again in the form of John Fiedler.

The script basically repeats the same idea over-and-over again. Wilby transforms into Elwood at inopportune moments, and this creates a lot of chaos as, in dog form, he flees the scene. Kids were apparently supposed to relate to child-like Tim, whose dense behavior is the source of much of the supposed comedy, but watching it today is pretty grueling.

Also typical of Disney films from this period, the set design, lighting, and camera work are cheap and rudimentary. For example, one prominent set purporting to be a local bar - this being a Disney film, no one smokes and there are no "mean drunks" - is little more than four walls and so overlit that it looks nothing like a real bar, resembling the kind of crude sets that turned up in Monogram and PRC movies back in the 1940s. Even TV movies from the period had better production values. There's also a great reliance on overly-familiar Toluca Lake locations and Disney's late, lamented if tiny backlot, which in this film anyway never seems real, even in Small Town, U.S.A. terms.

The film is loaded with special visual- and on-set effects of variable quality. More often than not, Disney would resort to process shots where none was needed, like someone sitting in a parked car. Some of this optical work is very good, such as one barely-perceptible traveling matte of Wilby / Elwood darting through an intersection as several police cars collide into one another, but most of it, especially the optical printing to make it appear that Elwood's mouth movements are synched with the dialogue, looked phony even back then.

Video & Audio

The Shaggy D.A. is presented in a 16:9 transfer that preserves the original 1.75:1 theatrical aspect ratio. The image is okay but not great, though partly this is due to all the original optical work rather than the transfer. The mono sound is unimpressive; French and Spanish audio is available, along with French and English subtitles. Disney loses half a point for making audiences sit through an interminable number of ads and anti-copying warnings.

Extra Features

Supplements include Putting on the Dog, a six-minute, 4:3 interview with makeup artist Robert J. Schiffer from 2004, who died last year at the age of 88 after a career stretching back at least as far as the Marx Bros. 1932 film Horse Feathers (!). He discusses the technical aspects of Dean Jones' transformations.

The Good, the Bad, and the Funny (a pun on par with those in the movie) is a nearly ten-minute featurette with Tim Conway and Dick Van Patten. It's okay.

Conway and Van Patten are joined by Jo Anne Worley for an entertaining Audio Commentary. No sign of Dean Jones, alas.

Parting Thoughts

The Shaggy D.A. is awfully labored and badly-dated, but undemanding family audiences may still find it reasonably entertaining, though it's far from Disney's best.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.