Don Knotts, in any role he played, always was a likable guy. In "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" Knotts plays Luther Heggs, the small town newspaper's typographer who's ready to cover the big story. This is a fun and amusing story with a familiar haunted house plot. Luther takes a challenge to stay a night in the old house before it gets torn down, and the mayhem starts to happen.It's not terribly original, nor is it hard to guess what crime might be involved. As for fright – can anyone seriously be scared in a haunted house or "horror" film with Don Knotts, Abbott and Costello or the Three Stooges? Well, it's fun and entertaining, but nothing that induces lots of laughter.

If you have young ones and you want to gradually introduce them to the horror genre without giving them nightmares, I suggest you start with this terrific movie, which does something that very few films have done successfully .... blend horror and comedy in a perfect mix. I wanted to share the Vincent Price/Roger Corman "Poe" films with my kids but chose this one first instead and I am glad that I did. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken had them laughing and shivering in fear within minutes of each other, with no lasting damage done (i.e., no nightmares). Luther (Don Knotts) is a jittery, energetic, nervous-as-all-getout, wannabe news reporter who is asked to spend one night in the scary old Simmons mansion, where a murder-suicide occurred many years before, and write an article about his experience. This sets up the first chilling night of terror in the Simmons house, where an organ spontaneously plays at midnight and there are creaks and shrills throughout. The kids were genuinely frightened by the old organ music (which scared me as an 8 year-old back in the day, too) but quickly got over it. Without spoiling any of the fun, I can say that I showed this movie at my daughter's slumber party and the whole gang of girls loved the film. I'm sure you will enjoy it too.

Don Knotts must have carefully chosen the script and story that would be his first starring film role. He certainly was taking a chance after leaving the Andy Griffith Show. Fortunately he chose well and in addition to a character that suited him perfectly he was surrounded by a cast of familiar and tried and true character players, including a few familiar faces from the Andy Griffith Show.The Ghost And Mr. Chicken finds Knotts as a typesetter on his local small town paper with aspirations to be a reporter. But his first attempt at a big scoop which I won't go into make him a laughingstock not unlike Barney Fife at times. The girl he desires Joan Staley is disappointed and his rival Skip Homeier is having a great old time at Don's expense.Another opportunity presents itself however. The owner of an old abandoned mansion Philip Ober returns to town wanting to demolish said mansion just take the wrecking ball and bulldozer to it. There's a lot of opposition because it is reputed to be haunted primarily by the ghost of Ober's wife who was murdered there 20 years earlier. But it's a town landmark of sorts and Knotts goes to investigate and comes up short the first time, but eventually solves a 20 year old murder. Which is more than Barney Fife ever did. The part that Don plays here set a pattern for his film career playing the lovable, bumbling schlep who gets it right in the end and gets the girl besides. Of course that was while he was a lead. Later on played various character roles, partnered with Tim Conway and those two were hilarious and is best known to today's audience as the mysterious TV repairman in Pleasantville.The Ghost And Mr. Chicken was a fine beginning for Don Knotts as a big screen leading movie comedian.

I joke with my friends that "Citizen Kane" isn't the greatest film of all time, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" is. OK, maybe not THE greatest, but I loved it in 9th grade and I've loved it ever since (probably have seen it 10 times). As my observant godson noted, even the music is perfect for this kind of little movie. I think it's the best, by far, of Don Knotts' films. My favorite line is "And they used Bon Ami!" Out of curiosity, I've checked with a number of published guides to DVDs available for sales/rental and, to their credit, most of the authors of those books acknowledge that the film, however "minor," has humor and a good deal of charm, and that Knotts is at his best.