This review is from a couple of years ago, but I felt like posting it again today.
A mid-60’s career move by Don Knotts meant Barney Fife had to leave behind his beloved Mayberry.
One of Knotts’ first post-Andy starring movie role, however, found him right back in small town America. This time, it’s Rachel, Kansas that provides the setting for Knotts’ role as aspiring newspaperman Luther Heggs in the Alan Rafkin directed 1966 comedy, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.
Knotts plays Heggs with the same combination of earnestness, hubris, and vulnerability that made Barney Fife one of television’s most memorable characters. The film’s makers play up Knotts’ connection with the show by placing Griffith show regulars in supporting roles, including Hal Smith as Calver Weems and Hope Summers as Suzanna Blush.
The story is a perfect fit for Knotts. Heggs labors as a typesetter in the basement of the Rachel newspaper, but longs to take his place upstairs as a full-fledged reporter. Unfortunately, the paper’s owner and editor George Beckett and its one reporter are convinced Luther doesn’t have what it takes to make it in the news business.
Heggs’ chance at success comes when Beckett asks him to spend the night in the local haunted house on the anniversary of the murder-suicide that took place there 20 years before and return with a sensational story.
Heggs accepts the challenge. Once inside the house he witnesses multiple spooky doings. Back at the newspaper office, he pours out the story that becomes front page news the next day.
The owner of the house, who is planning its demolition, sues the paper and Heggs for libeling his family’s name. The ensuing court case threatens to expose Heggs as a liar, but instead ends with his vindication.
Watching the film now, more than forty years after its initial release, provides viewers a glimpse back to another America, one not devoured by cynicism or splintered by intractable social problems. However it was intended at the time, the film stands four decades later as a light-hearted, witty paean to American small town life, to a time when such a life was possible.
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken manages all this with nothing but a strong story and a set of talented actors, never resorting to special effects pyrotechnics, shocking violence, or graphic sexual imagery to keep its audience entertained. Though adults and children alike could easily enjoy it, the film avoids the sentimentality and didacticism of much of the recent odious crop of “family films.”
Films that stand the test of time are those that touch on recurring human issues. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken manages exactly that. The story of Heggs’ ascent from downtrodden plebe to celebrated hero speaks to the perpetual human struggle to improve our lots.
Some films, like this one, also take on layers of meaning as they age, as the culture around them changes. They capture their moment like a photograph. Looking back at it we see only a dim impression of how things might have been, simple half-real apparitions that come back from the past like a specter, a spirit…a ghost.
