Halloween Horror Watch #30: The Uninvited and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

The Uninvited -- Lewis Allen



I blind-bought the new Criterion release of The Uninvited because I love when Criterion releases horror movies and I had a gift card. I was expecting something along the lines of The Innocents  So color me surprised when The Uninvited opens with a pseudo-screwball opening with (grown) siblings chasing their dog that is chasing a squirrel through an abandoned house. The levity continues throughout the film and is maybe its greatest asset (aside from the appealing performances). It makes the characters easy to like and when supernatural things start to happen, it's more believable because the characters are feel like real people.

Another great thing about The Uninvited is that the siblings move into the abandoned house and quickly discover it's haunted (there had been prior warning), but instead of being terrified, they try to figure out what's going on. It reminded me of The Changeling starring George C. Scott (also terrific). The ending gets a little hokey, but I'm used to that, especially from older movies where things always have to end happy, but The Uninvited was a tremendous surprise and a great blind-buy.

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken -- Alan Rafkin



I'm not surprise that The Ghost and Mr. Chicken was disappointing as I've been disappointed in just about every Don Knotts vehicle I've watched in the past year (including The Apple Dumpling Gang, How to Frame a Figg, The Reluctant Astronaut, and The Private Eyes). I was really hoping the second movie in my haunted house double feature would feature more time in the haunted house. That's the big problem. Maybe fifteen minutes are spent in the house with Knotts and the rest is him being lauded for writing a great newspaper article or in a courtroom. I can't imagine that's what anybody came to see. It's cute enough for what it is and it was neat seeing many recognizable faces show up (many from The Andy Griffith Show). There were some interesting choices to linger in scenes and on jokes that slowed the movie down but were good character beats or just funny so the choices played well enough. The scary house looks exactly like the Psycho house and it was shot on the Universal lot, but IMDB trivia assures me that it's not the same house. However, The 'Burbs was shot on the same lot, so that's awesome (I love this stuff).