Pop the popcorn and settle into one of Morgantown native Don Knotts’ best films.
Our native funnyman Don Knotts would have turned 100 this July. If you don’t already love Morgantown’s gift to wholesome American slapstick, a cozy weekend movie night coming up is a great time to revisit his genius.
The first film Knotts made after he left The Andy Griffith Show was the horror–comedy The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. It was released this week in 1966 and, in this writer’s humble opinion, it’s his finest work.
Knotts plays Luther Heggs, a typesetter for the local Rachel Courier Express who hopes to earn respect and a real reporting job at the newspaper. He pitches the idea of a story on an abandoned estate, the site of the infamous Simmons murder–suicide—a place where it’s said dead old Mr. Simmons can sometimes be heard playing the organ at the stroke of midnight. The newspaper’s hard-boiled editor tasks Heggs with spending the night alone in the mansion on the 20th anniversary of the fateful event.
The front-page story about Heggs’ terrifying experience makes him a hometown hero, until the mansion’s owner sues him for libel—which, this being a 1960s comedy, all works out in the end.
If you know the quirky mix of vulnerability and bravado that made Don Knotts’ comedy so charming, you know this story is the perfect showcase for him. The movie is a gorgeously nostalgic Technicolor watch that was a box office success and is currently rated 7.2 on IMDB. You can stream it on Amazon.com. If you’re planning a family movie night, it’s useful to know that the murder theme is about Scooby-Doo–level scary, although the organ music is delightfully creepy.
A bit of Knotts trivia: Also released in a January past was Knotts’ film The Reluctant Astronaut, which premiered in Houston on January 25, 1967. Two days later, Apollo 1 caught fire during a pre-flight test at Cape Canaveral, and three astronauts died. Universal Pictures withdrew the film and did not put it out for general release until the following June.
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