Dexter Riley

Dexter Riley is the main character in three movies, all of which involve him temporarily getting superpowers and foiling the schemes of criminal kingpin A. J. Arno.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)

Dexter Riley is a student at Medfield College, although if Professor Ned Brainard is still a faculty member there, he is never seen. Medfield is perpetually plagued by money problems, and Dexter and his friends convince local businessman A. J. Arno to donate a computer to the college. Dexter suffers a freak accident while trying to repair the computer during a thunderstorm and gains superhuman mental powers. He becomes a celebrity and decides to put his intellect to use helping the college win a $100,000 prize in a quiz bowl competition.

Unfortunately, while he's on television, Dexter hears the password to the files on Arno's gambling ring and Arno discovers that Dexter has all of the computer's information in his head. Arno kidnaps him, but Dexter's friends help him escape. A knock to the head causes him to lose his super-intellect, but he's able to hold it together for long enough during the competition that one of his friends can deliver the winning answer. Arno ends up in prison.

Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972)

Dexter Riley is trying to solve the problem of invisibility. He manages to create a liquid which will turn anything covered with it completely invisible, which washes off with water. Meanwhile, Medfield college is facing financial trouble because local crook A. J. Arno has managed somehow to buy the mortgage on the college.

Dexter and his friends use the invisibility formula to spy on Arno and discover that he plans to foreclose on the college and use an old statute allowing gambling on the property to tear down the college and create a gambling mecca.

To get the money, Dean Higgins of Medfield College tries to get the college entered into a science competition which will win enough money to keep current with the mortgage. In order to make the deal to get into the competition, the Dean has to play golf with the founder of the competition, but the Dean is horrible at golfing, so Dexter uses the invisibility formula to give the Dean the best game anyone has ever had on the course.

The Dean becomes instantly famous, and enters into a winner-take-all golf competition which would get all the money the college needs if he wins but would close the college if he loses. The Dean doesn't realize that he had help with his golf game, and thinks he's just a naturally good golfer.

Meanwhile, Arno and his cronies discover the invisibility formula and steal it to use it to rob a bank. Dexter and his friends discover the plan, but can't convince the police until it's too late. In the end, the bank robbery is foiled, Arno and his henchmen are jailed again, and the invisibility formula wins the prize and the college is saved, though Dexter and his friends note that Dexter will have to invent something else to save the college next year.

The Strongest Man in the World (1975)

Dexter Riley is now a senior at Medfield. A lab accident involving Dexter's formula to make cows gain weight and a box of cereal results in cereal that gives people super-strength. Dexter shows off his super-strength to Dean Higgins, who seizes upon a plan to get Medfield out of financial trouble and save his own job: he'll take the formula to the company that makes the cereal, Crumply Crunch.

Higgins and the president of the cereal company, known to everyone as Aunt Harriet (mostly because her board of directors is made up of her relatives), concoct a plan to challenge the #1 cereal company, Krinkle Krunch, to a weightlifting competition between Medfield College and State college.

However, Crumply Crunch has a spy on the board of directors, working for Krinkle Krunch. He gets A. J. Arno released from prison, and sets Arno and his gang to work stealing the formula. The new batch of formula gets stolen, by kidnapping Dexter's roommate and hypnotizing him into giving up the formula, but it doesn't work. This is bad news for Medfield in the weight lifting competition, since they're pitting the science department against the State College weightlifting team (who are all gigantic piles of muscle).

When the cereal doesn't give anyone superstrength, Dexter realizes what must have happened: he thought it was his roommate's experiment that got into the cereal, but it was his. He leaves the competition to go get his formula. While in the lab, he finds Arno, his henchmen, and the spy, and uses the formula to take care of them all. He gets back to the competition with only minutes to spare, and saves the day (and presumably saves Medfield college once and for all).

Fitting it into the WW4C

Dexter Riley is very much a hands-on sort of mad scientist. Even when he intends to make something, he ends up making it via some sort of happy accident. However, his accidents always seem to result in creating some sort of formula to give people superpowers.

Merlin Jones (to be covered later) was a few years ahead of Dexter in using mad science to create superpowers (having experimented with telepathy and superstrength, among other things). After Dexter gets out of college in the 1970s, he may work with Jones to create a formula which will give people permanent superpowers, which would mean that the resurgence of actual superheroes and villains would probably start in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Medfield College's Metahuman Studies program is probably the best in the nation.