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(More customer reviews)Don Knotts is a national treasure, one of the most naturally gifted comic actors the world has ever seen. As big a Don Knotts fan as I have always been, and as many times as I have seen all of the old episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, I had actually never seen any of Knotts' classic comedies from the late 1960s. This Reluctant Hero Pack has helped alleviate this problem. Sure, I could have spent four times as much money and acquired each of these four films on individual DVDs, but frugality is one of the many small-town American virtues Don Knotts' characters usually embodied. These films have been compressed so that they will all fit on one double-sided DVD, but there is nothing wrong with the picture quality of this disk whatsoever. It's not like you're missing out on any special features on the individual offerings, either; unfortunately, there are also next to no special features on this Reluctant Hero pack - all you get are three of the four films' trailers. Still, what matters are the films themselves, and you're guaranteed to have over six and a half hours of unadulterated laughter with these four Don Knotts classics.
The four films included here are not necessarily Don Knotts' best four movies, but each of them is hilarious. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken puts Don Knotts inside a haunted house overnight. Remember how funny that haunted house episode of The Andy Griffith Show was? Well, this film is even funnier. It also features the lovely Joan Staley as the object of affection of Knotts' character. His character, by the way, is a truly reluctant hero, one whose heroics and honesty are put to an extreme test. Then you have The Reluctant Astronaut, which I consider to be the funniest of the four films included here. Knotts plays a grown man who goes off - very reluctantly - to become an astronaut - despite the fact that he is terrified of heights. Once he gets to Houston, he finds out his job is actually that of a janitor rather than a spaceman, and he is forced to live a lie because he is afraid to admit the truth to his proud father. Just when everything falls apart for him, though, he gets the chance to put everything right - if he can muster up the courage to answer the heroic call.
The Shakiest Gun in the West pits Knotts in the role of a newly graduated dentist who goes West to spread oral hygiene along the frontier. Along the way, he finds himself suddenly married to a mysterious redhead with all sorts of secrets. Despite his obvious weaknesses in the gun-fighting department (they call this film The Shakiest Gun in the West for a reason), he finds himself celebrated as a fierce Indian-killer and hero of the West. At the time, he doesn't realize how undeserving he is of the respect he garners, but he does get the chance to prove himself a true hero in the end.
The last of the four films included here, The Love God, is unlike any other Don Knotts film. This was a film way ahead of its time, as it addresses issues of sexual behavior and censorship head-on in an hysterically satirical manner. Knotts plays a timid publisher of a bird magazine who somehow ends up becoming famous as the country's premier playboy and smut peddler, the very standard bearer of the forces of the sexual revolution. This film has garnered a retroactive PG-13 rating, so it is not quite the true family film that the three other movies are, but there is nothing here that the most sheltered five-year-old hasn't already seen and heard in this day and age.
Why am I even trying to give a quick description of these films? This is, after all, Don Knotts we're talking about, so you know good and well these movies are basically guaranteed to be hilarious. Don't deny yourself - especially at this price - of the enjoyment of four classic films from one of America's funniest and most beloved comic actors.
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He's one of the most popular and admired funnymen of all time, a master of comic timing and physical humor. Now four of the classic films starring the delightful Don Knotts are available on DVD for the first time in this fun-filled collector's set. After catapulting to national fame as the often impossible but ever lovable Deputy Barney Fife on TV's The Andy Griffith Show, Knotts set out to conquer the silver screen in a series of unforgettable feature films. Now four of these hilarious farces are brought together in this amazing collection that keeps the laughs coming.
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