Jimmy the Boy Wonder

(1966, U.S.) color 70 minutes
Cinemation Pictures / Creative Communications / Mayflower Pictures
Screenplay: Hal Berg
Cinematography: Andy Romanoff
Produced by Hal Berg
Directed by Herschell G. Lewis

With: Dennis Jones (Jimmy Jaye), Nancy Berg (Aurora), David Blight Jr. (Mr. Fig), Alan Rock (Medicine Man), Karl Stoeber (Astronomer)

Plot Outline (IMDb): Tired of the drudgery of his daily routine, young Jimmy shouts out, "I wish time would stop!" Somehow, his wish gets heard by the master clock, and everyone (except Jimmy) is frozen in their tracks. Observing this catastrophe is a magical astronomer, who sends his daughter Aurora to talk Jimmy into helping her undo the damage before the evil Mr. Fig siezes the opportunity to take over the world. As Jimmy and Aurora travel to the end of the world to replace the Golden Globe in the master clock, they pass through strange new places, all the while with Mr. Fig trying to stop them on their mission.

***

One of the most bizarre of the Grade-Z made-in-the-USA kiddy flicks of the 1960s, JIMMY THE BOY WONDER is a primitive, psychotic fantasy from the primitive psychotic himself, director Herschell G. Lewis, surely a crowning achievement of a very sick brain.

About as far away as you can get from Lewis' rageful and bloody gore films (also about as far away as you can get from his other fantasy offering, the static and stillborn SANTA VISITS THE MAGIC LAND OF MOTHER GOOSE), JIMMY... weaves the disturbed but fluid tale of a boy whose innocent wish to slow down time actually stops the world in it's tracks. With the help of Merlin the Magician and spirit-goddess Aurora he manages to save the world from the evil machinations of Mr. Fig, a skid-row Satan in a bad check blazer and red slacks.

JIMMY... features amateur-night acting, loud, psychedelic fashions, some crazy songs (the best/worst song is Mr. Fig's "I Killed Time," a demented mess replete with ungodly Godardian jump cuts), utterly tacky photography (including a great scene with a group of dancing Lolitas playing slow-motion catch in some surreal limbo with what appears to be a shriveled human head), myriad occult overtones, scary characters, evil incantations, etc.

JIMMY... thus comes across like some sort of evil LSD home movie for kids, like THE WIAZRD OF OZ as remade by Kenneth Anger. Lewis (who appears here in a brief cameo, mowing the lawn at seven in the morning), likes to play around with time and the subjective fragility of perception, and JIMMY... is as unnerving and experimental in that aspect as the director's maniacal and cruel THE WIZARD OF GORE (1970).

There's also a short French cartoon (an excerpt from THE CURIOUS ADVENTURES OF MR. WONDERBIRD) inserted to pad the film to a full hour (purportedly overdubbed by Herschell himself).

JIMMY THE BOY WONDER is an ill, extremely perverse yet curiously fetching fantasy, diabolical and awful and hard to believe. Filmed in large part at "Monkey Jungle" in Coral Gables, Florida!

Video/DVD availability: VHS (Something Weird Video)