The Ghost and Mr. Chicken - Pure Comedy Gold

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) is pure comedy gold. The humor is this film will have you rolling in the aisles with laughter. I've laughed so hard myself from watching this film that tears rolled down my eyes. Actor Don Knotts has the most animated face in the history of entertainment. His facial gestures alone will have you laughing throughout the entire film. This film is a series of five films that Knotts starred in from 1966 to 1971 for Universal Studios. He also appears in The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), The Shakiest Gun in the West, (1968), The Love God (1969), and How to Frame a Figg (1971). The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is Knotts' first major project after leaving The Andy Griffith Show on television. All five films are sold as a Blu-Ray set from Shout Factory. The films can be purchased separately also.  

Knotts plays Luther Heggs, a typesetter for the local newspaper, The Rachel Courier Express, in Rachel, Kansas. The citizens of Rachel have avoided a run-down mansion in the town owned by the Simmons family. The Simmons mansion bears a striking resemblance to the Munsters Mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Twenty years earlier, Simmons murdered his wife and then committed suicide in the mansion. The town is approaching the twenty-year anniversary of the murder-suicide. Rumors in the town suggest that the mansion is haunted.

Heggs happens to notice a local man named Calver Weems being hit on the head with a board in front of the Simmons mansion and runs to tell his boss (Dick Sargent) at the newspaper that the man was murdered. His colleagues at the newspaper and the town citizens laugh at Heggs when it turns out that the man was not murdered but is alive and well. Heggs gets a reputation for having an overactive imagination.

As the twenty-year anniversary of the Simmons murder-suicide approaches, Heggs writes a small filler article about the Simmons story. The article gets lots of attention from the local citizens. To follow up on the popular story, Heggs' boss challenges him to stay a night in the mansion. Being the awkward dunce that Heggs is known for, no one has any confidence that he will stay in the mansion for one night.

Heggs decides to stay overnight in the murder mansion to prove he is not a coward and encounters a number of ghostly apparitions. He sees a portrait of Mrs. Simmons on the wall with garden shears stuck in her neck and blood flowing from the painting. In the organ loft of the mansion, a dusty old organ with blood stained keys plays all by itself. Heggs throws a book at a bookcase, and a secret passage opens behind the bookcase.

Heggs manages to make it an entire night in the mansion and later writes an article about his experiences. Nicholaus Simmons, a surviving family member, sues Heggs for writing the article and demands that he retract his story. Before making a ruling on the case, the judge orders that the jurors and town citizens take a tour of the Simmons mansion with Heggs leading the tour. Heggs tries to get the events of his overnight stay at the mansion to unfold once again, but with no success. The entire town writes off his experiences as an overactive imagination.    

The funny moments in this film are too many to mention. Heggs backs into a tree in front of the Simmons mansion and thinks he is being attacked. He turns around and karate chops the tree, as if he is confronting a person. A similar scene occurs when Heggs encounters a mannequin in the mansion and once again thinks he is being attacked, so he karate chops the mannequin. The expressions on Heggs' face will have you laughing for days. 

During Heggs' picnic speech at the town's Chamber of Commerce meeting, Heggs stands in front of a podium to give a speech about his experiences. His hands are shaking so much from nervousness that he eventually lets the wind blow his speech papers out of his hands. The microphone malfunctions during the mayor's speech at the meeting and he says to the town citizens: "The electrician must be a Democrat!" Heggs makes the same comment when the microphone malfunctions during his speech.

During his speech in front of the Chamber of Commerce, Heggs also tells the crowd: "I have been called brave. What is brave? Let me clarify this." This scene is particularly funny because Heggs shakes with nervousness as a person in the crowd yells out "Attaboy, Luther!"  Heggs sits at a table with a beautiful brunette he has a crush on named Alma (Joan Staley). After mentioning to Alma that they both have a love of food in common, He tells Alma "I just love good food. My mother loved good food. She used to say I'd rather have good food than bad food any day of the week." Many of his comments to Alma in the film appear to be very awkward, but this helps to express Heggs' shy and awkward personality.

For absolute Halloween fun and scares - don't miss The Ghost and Mr. Chicken this Halloween season. Happy viewing.

-- Steve D. Stones

Sleepaway Camp; Maniac; sleazy horror flicks for Halloween season

 This October I was looking to recommend a couple of sleazy cult films for Halloween. For viewers who want to slum it a little. Here’s a couple:

Maniac, 1934, directed by Dwain Esper. Note an actor named Horace B. Carpenter. He has more than 325 credits, mostly in bit parts. In this exploitation, states-rights 51-minute celluloid garbage he’s memorable as the most insane, maniacal mad scientist on film. Working with a disgraced ex-vaudevillian who later kills him, he works to resurrect the dead.

A cat with its eyeball popped out; male mortuary workers leering over an attractive dead young woman; same young woman wandering partially nude in laboratory and later kidnapped and assaulted by a young man driven crazy by adrenaline; a creepy neighbor with hundreds of cats he raises to make fur attire; inserts of women in undies and showing their breasts; a hysterical wife wondering what the mad doctor did to her husband; real mad doctor lying dead in basement; cops to the rescue; sets too cheap for Ed Wood.

This has been described as the worst film ever made. It isn’t of course. It’s bad, true, but so unique you can’t take your eyes off the screen, at least the first time. Schlockmeister Esper directed. His wife Hildergarde Stadie, who worked in carnivals, wrote the hysterical script. As was the norm for these films, it pretends to be "educational," with inserts about the various forms of insanity the doctor is experiencing. It’s a combination of Poe’s The Black Cat and Murders in the Rue Morgue; throw in the ‘80s film Reanimator. It likely made a fortune at the box office. You can stream it free on many sites.

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Sleepaway Camp, 1983, directed by Robert Hiltzik. You’ll need a shower after watching this grubby little slasher at a teenager summer camp. A boy cousin and his “sister” come to the nastiest, dirtiest, most dysfunctional camp. The cook is an overt pedophile. His co-workers just giggle as he vocalizes his rape wishes. Said cook is punished with a fate worse than death. One strength of this film is the inventive slasher attacks and kills within its 88 minutes.

The camp includes a very strange, paranoid owner who lusts after a teenage counselor who is a bit of a sociopath herself. The backstory is a slow-building romance between two young, bullied teens, Angela, (Felissa Rose), and Ronnie. The rest of the film is just one murder after another. There’s a backstory with Angela and her cousin, Ricky, and one crazy-as-a-loon mom, which you’ll have to watch the movie to learn more about.

I like little touches in this sleazy, gory film, like flypaper in the kitchen literally covered with dozens of dead flies. A final, wildly inappropriate credits song over the jarring final scene shot adds to the kitsch.

The ending of this film is iconic in low-budget horror. It does pack a punch for the viewer. This is not a good film but it’s unique; tasteless but quite watchable. Also, lead actress Rose, who has become a regular at genre conventions, wisely underplays her role; in contrast to the rest of the cast. That adds to the impact of the finale.

You can find Sleepaway Camp for free on Tubi, Prime and YouTube; and probably more streamers. Several badly reviewed sequels have been released. I have not seen any of those. However, I do watch Sleepaway Camp every October.

-- Doug Gibson