Movie Details
| Title: | The Ghost and Mr. Chicken | |
| Director: | Alan Rafkin | |
| Year: | 1966 | |
| Genre: | Comedy | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.13.22 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.13.22 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2022 Day four, last day, last few hours really before my time window closes. I wanted to start off with a classic Sunday Morning Matinee and this movie is about as Matinee-ish as you can get. Of course, since I slept in it's more like a mid-afternoon matinee but whatever. At some point in childhood, I saw this movie called The Private Eyes. it was basically Don Knotts and Tim Conway bumbling through a whodunnit. I laughed my kid ass off. My mom, somewhat dismissively, referred to this particular brand of comedy as "slapstick", intimating that it was on the sillier and more childish end of the humor spectrum (at the time i thought the comic strip Cathy and Doonesbury was at the opposite end being erudite sophisticated Frasier-type shit). I didn't care. I thought it was maybe the hardest I had laughed up to that point, but I didn't know the name of it and haven't seen it since. Well, I got a copy of that but in the process realized that I had never actually seen this classic ever, so what was going to be a Don Knotts double feature has turned into just this one because I picked 50 goddamn movies to fit into 19 slots. I knew pretty much nothing about the story of this film other than it was some venue for Knotts to do his thing. The story actually had a strong Preston Sturges vibe to me with the whole small town and cadre of supporting characters like the house tenants and the ladies' psychic league and everyone. Plus the guy saying "Atta Boy!" from off-screen like he's Rob Schneider. The ending gets a bit nuts but whatever, still fun. My favorite part was probably the speech he has to give. Just him shaking his notes in front of the mic cracked me up. All these bright 60s technicolors just scream nostalgia for me and I wasn't even alive. I think it comes from watching Disney channel as a kid with Swiss Family Robinson and the ilk. On a final note, I was very heartened to read on Knotts' wiki entry that he was a ladies' man. There's a chance for us all. |
