The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) on Netflix

G19661h 30mComedy Family Mystery

Luther Heggs typesets for the Rachel Courier Express and wants to be a reporter. His editor sends him to spend a night in the Simmons mansion, site of a twenty-year-old murder-suicide.

Netflix3.5/5
IMDb7.3/108,516 votes
Rotten Tomatoes67%

Trailer

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Plot summary

Luther Heggs sets type in the basement office of the Rachel Courier Express in Rachel, Kansas, and rooms at the Natalie Miller boarding house. Nobody takes his reporting ambitions seriously, and staff reporter Ollie Weaver ridicules him. Alma Parker, whom Luther admires, is dating Ollie. The paper's janitor, Mr. Kelsey, once a gardener at the Simmons Mansion, tells Luther about Ephraigm Simmons, thought to have killed his wife there before jumping from the organ loft, and about the organ music the town says sounds in the house at midnight. Editor George Beckett assigns Luther to spend the night of the twentieth anniversary in the house and write about it.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Andy Griffith suggested the film's premise by expanding on a 1963 Andy Griffith Show episode about a deserted house, then joined writers Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, star Don Knotts and producer Edward Montagne in shaping the story, contributing the running gag line "Attaboy, Luther!" in exchange for only a token payment and no screen credit.
Star Don Knotts personally telephoned the president of the Bon Ami cleaning company to get permission to use its brand name in a running joke, and had his character drive an Edsel Corsair, a real car remembered as a commercial flop, to underline Luther Heggs' quirky reputation.
Universal contract star Joan Staley, normally a blonde, had to wear a dark wig because the producers felt she was "too sexy" as a blonde and the role called for a brunette; it was the same wig worn by Claudia Cardinale in Blindfold.
The "Simmons Mansion", a three-story Second-Empire Victorian house on Colonial Street at the Universal Studios lot, was built for So Goes My Love in 1946, appeared as the Dowd house in Harvey and, after several alterations, served as Gabrielle Solis's home in Desperate Housewives.
SPOILER
The original cut included a scene explaining the portrait stabbing: pressing a secret button turned the portrait around to reveal the shears stuck in the throat with red paint. The scene was cut from all other prints and has been seen only a few times since.
The film was shot under the working title Running Scared, and its eventual title is likely a comic riff on the earlier ghost picture The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.