In the small town of Rachel, Kansas, Luther Heggs (Don Knotts), is a typesetter and wanna be reporter for the local paper “The Rachel Courier Express”. Luther is a rather slight and nervous man who lives in a boarding house run by Mrs. Natalie Miller (Lurene Tuttle). Also living in Mrs. Miller’s boarding house is Ollie Weaver (Skip Homeier), the actual reporter for the Rachel Courier.
One night, while driving home, Luther thinks he sees the town drunk, Calver Weems (Hal Smith), get murdered. Luther rushes to the police station to report the crime. Ollie and the owner of the newspaper, George Beckett (Dick Sargent), arrive at the police station to find out that Calver was only knocked unconscious. Luther is then ridiculed for throwing everyone into a panic.
The crime happened in front of the old Simmons house. The house is reportedly haunted. It seems that twenty years ago Mr. Simmons murdered Mrs. Simmons and then committed suicide. The house has been vacant ever since. Now, a relative of the Simmons family, Nicholas Simmons (Philip Ober) has put the house through probate and is planning on tearing it down.
Mr. Kelsey (Liam Redmond) is the janitor of the newspaper office. He tells Luther that the anniversary of the Simmons murder/suicide is coming up and that a human-interest filler about the anniversary might strike up some curiosity of the event. Kelsey helps Luther write the article. People liked the article, so Beckett decides to expand on it. To that extent he convinces Luther to stay overnight at the Simmons mansion and write about his experience. Luther’s only hope is that he passes an uneventful night. Instead, he is thrust into a nightmare where strange things happen that, in the light of day, seem to disappear leaving no one to believe what Luther saw.
“The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” was released in 1966 and was directed by Alan Rafkin. It is an American horror comedy mystery with slapstick old dark house and rom-com elements.
One of the things I liked about the movie was all these wonderful character actors throughout the film, even though most of them came from the Andy Griffith Show. The movie was basically an expansion of the Season 2 Episode 4 “The Haunted House” episode of the Andy Griffith Show.
Luther Heggs drives a 1958 Edsel Corsair in the film. The Edsel was a car named after Henry Ford's son, Edsel Ford. The car was launched during the depression so sales of it never really materialized. It ended up a big failure for the Ford Motor Company. Having Luther drive an Edsel adds to the assumption that Luther himself was a failure in life.
One of the ghostly things that Luther sees in the house is a portrait of Mrs. Simmons with a pair of garden sheers sticking out her neck and blood dripping down. Later, when everyone goes to the mansion to view the events Luther experienced, the portrait is intact. At one time the original film had a scene that explained what happened to the portrait, but it was eventually cut. The scene explains that there was a copy of the portrait that could be swiveled into place after pushing a hidden button.
Reportedly, the off-screen voice you hear yelling, "Attaboy” was from screenwriter Everett Greenbaum. Joan Stanley, who played Alma, was Miss November in Playboy Magazine in 1958.