Overrated and overhyped

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Luther Heggs (Don Knotts) is a bumbling fraidy cat. He is the laughing stock of the town after claiming to witness a death. Newspaper reporter Ollie Weaver leads the town in making fun of the wannabe reporter. Ollie is also dating the lovely Alma Parker who Luther is in love with. There is a mansion where 20 years before, a husband murdered his wife and committed suicide. For a story, the editor proposes that Luther spend the night in the Simmons mansion.It's a little fun to see Don Knotts stumble around and being scared living off of his TV success. It's Don Knotts being Don Knotts. It's not that funny but it has a light charm. It's very light and not that compelling. There are few big laughs. I would think Andy Griffith fans loved this movie when it came out but I never actually seen the show. My Don Knotts is Ralph Furley.

Barney Fife and Ralph Furley, two of the most memorable cowardly braggarts of T.V. sitcoms, are instantly recognizable in the personality of Don Knott's Luther Heggs, the typesetter on the newspaper of a small city who longs to be a reporter but can't seem to get the scoop. He fails in his first try to report a murder when the corpse walks in, and when he has the chance to redeem himself by spending the night in the house where a grizzly murder took place, he takes it, even though it is the night of the 20th anniversary. The entire town stands behind him with the exception of the haunted house's owner who intends to tear down the rat trap and doesn't want any publicity.Knotts had left "The Andy Griffith Show" the year before after the lead in the extremely successful "The Incredible Mr. Limpet", and while he didn't explode into a huge comedy movie star, the films he did under his brief contract with Universal were amusing, if sometimes instantly forgettable. "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" is by far and large the most popular of these light-hearted farces which played mainly on the "neighborhood" circuit rather than the huge movie palaces still rampant in the 1960's. It is perhaps a bit too long, but most of it moves very fast, even though the revelation of the mystery of the so-called haunted house is not at all surprising.In many ways, this feels like a big-screen version of some T.V. sitcom, probably because the cast is filled with veterans of 1960's sitcoms, particularly "Bewitched". Not only is there Dick Sargent (The replacement Darren) and Sandra Gould (the second Gladys), but Reta Shaw (Aunt Bertha/Hagatha) and Charles Lane (several parts), and of course, Don Knotts who had achieved T.V. fame on "The Andy Griffith Show". Hope Summers, who plays the screaming woman in the opening scene, appeared on tons of sitcoms, and Lurene Tuttle (Knott's kindly landlady) was everywhere as well. Shaw is hysterical as the head of a ladies organization not just interested in the supernatural, but obsessed with it.Special note should be made of the snappy music by Vic Mizzy whose scores dominated many similar movies of the 1960's, as well as a few T.V. series including "The Addams Family". When you hear this music, you can't help but realize that it screams '60's, and in the most delightful nostalgic way. Another reason why this film screams "sitcom" is the fact that its director, Alan Rafkin, was behind the cameras on many T.V. shows from the 1950's through the 90's, only directing a few features, and mostly ones like this.

There's no doubt that The Andy Griffith Show was never what it was after Don Knotts left the series. In The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Knotts once again takes the character of a bumbling nerd with a good heart - trying to make a name for himself in Small Town America while not always noticing how much he is dismissed by his fellow citizens. Knotts pulls it off expertly, and his performance does not suffer from over-exposure in a full-length movie.It's not an epic - the story is simple and innocent. The gags are not perfectly timed, but funny nonetheless. When Luther asks the town drunk what he is doing when he is supposed to be dead, it's the first of several memorable quotes the kids loved repeating.The movie looks clean; the classic Technicolor filming gives the movie the feeling that it was put together by people who knew what they were doing. The sets are perfectly lit, and nothing looks phony. The cameras are all locked down or on cranes. Thankfully, freehand (shaky) camera work was not all the rage back then like it is now.Overall, this is a fun film to watch in the afternoon when you are in the mood for AMC. Bring the kids in also; they will get a kick out of it if they are not already jaded by the sewage available on screen today.

The first Don Knotts vehicle I've watched is widely considered his best effort; however, I was let down by it following the internet hype back when the film surfaced on DVD (including an endorsement by Mario Bava biographer Tim Lucas on his blog). The title explains all: the star is a milquetoast who works as type setter at a small-town newspaper – of course, he really wants to be a journalist (though his inexperience leads him to report a murder solely on hearsay, only to be embarrassed when the alleged victim turns up shaken but very much alive at the Police station!) and eventually finds his great opportunity with a story about a legendary local haunted house (where a violent death and suicide had occurred twenty years earlier).Asked to spend the night there by his editor, the hero comes across secret panels in the library, organs that play by themselves (complete with bloodied keys), not to mention a portrait slashed by a dagger! Consequently, by the next day he's a celebrity – with frequent off-screen enthusiastic goadings of "Attaboy, Luther!" – which also earns him the attention of the woman he had long fancied but who, of course, is the girlfriend of his biggest persecutor, a hot-shot at the same paper; the latter's constant wheedling of Knotts causes the couple to split and, needless to say, the hero gets the girl himself by the end of it.Let me put it this way: THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN is a pleasant enough diversion (especially the last half-hour featuring the courtroom scene – the current owner of the haunted house has filed a libel suit, in which it's established that Knotts has always had a vivid imagination – and the eventual disastrous on-site verification of the haunting – since the manifestations, unbeknownst to the hero, were only the handiwork of the helpful Irish janitor at his workplace!). Still, plot and characterization are so clichéd as to render the film utterly predictable which, coupled with its own inherently unassuming nature, makes for something less than classic (at least in my book)! For what it's worth, Vic Mizzy's bouncy yet atmospheric score clearly proves an asset – with the antics of an old ladies' group keen on the paranormal, while essentially silly, being a fairly amusing touch as well. Incidentally, I should be able to get my hands on five more of Knotts' films – but the one I'll be sure to check out presently is THE SHAKIEST GUN IN THE WEST (1968), since it's a remake of the Bob Hope classic THE PALEFACE (1948)