the ghost and mr. chicken[1966]

mr. chicken is the legendary comic actor don knotts. nick wanted to watch a scary movie this evening and i suggested this flick as i knew it would be just his speed, the plot involves knotts as a wannabe newspaper reporter who to prove his reporter's chops must spend the night in a haunted house. i told nick that this movie was just a year older than me. he said, whoa! to which i concured. yep, a movie older than your old man. grasp that! still, i said, there are lots of movies older than even grandpa. to which nick said, double whoa! of course, it's all a matter of perspective. the world has changed a great deal in the intervening 40 odd years. we don't drive edsels for example, or wear three-piece suits and matching headgear. nor do we address each other as mr. or mrs. nevertheless this movie is a delight. comedies, back in the old days, were slower and more deliberate in their pacing. there are no gross-out gags. language is pretty dull, unless you consider the word 'heck' to be menacing and offensive. it's easy to be lulled by such decorum. but that's just the point, i think. knotts was nothing but a brilliant physical comedian. his slim frame simply hums electric. the movie is built on knotts' persona. his name on the marquee is a harbinger of what awaits us, nervous energy, stuttering speech and an everyman gestalt that most of us can relate too. plus the flick is rich with spookhouse couture, spider webs, creepy organ music, an old house, and an old story of a murder/suicide. by the second reel we know pretty much who is behind the hauntings, but it is a terrific ride to the end all the same. oh, i also wanted to mention knotts' love interest, played by joan staley. i have to admit that she is an unknown quantity to me. she is in this movie the straight man to everyone's zaniness, much like jerry seinfield in his eponymous tv show, and she is absolutely lovely to look at. at least to me. what i kept thinking as i watched this movie tonight was that this was the world as it stood as i entered it. or at least it was the world as it wanted to be viewed. we must take art on its own terms and not view it, perhaps, within our own historical perspective. but i couldn't help but think about hippies, the vietnam war, lsd, free love etc. etc. as i watched this movie. those are things absent in this movie. rather we have an old-fashioned spookhouse flick reified by a great comic actor. does a dork get the girl and save his newspaper's reputation? does a bear shit in the woods, might be an answer. do spooks go boo in the night? watch this flick and you tell me.