Scary Week Continues- The Scariest Movie of All Time

Poor kids today. They have never had a chance to Shake a Pudding, they never stood with their parents in a parking lot waiting for Cabbage Patch dolls to fall from the sky, and they were never privileged to see the greatest horror movie of all time on the big screen.

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

To be honest, neither did The Prude. The Family Prude did not go to movie theaters when she was young. But, when it came out on television several years later, Mama Prude allowed her to watch. If The Prude's mother had realized that this lenience would be the means by which the fledgling yellow streak embedded in Young Prude's back would widen to a 4-lane highway, she may have reconsidered.

'The Ghost and Mr. Chicken' stars Barney Fife, no longer in Mayberry,  and with neither Andy, Opie nor Aunt Bee anywhere in sight. 

And therein lies one of the terrors of the movie.  The town Mr. Chicken- I think his name is Luther in the movie- lives in sort of LOOKS Mayberry-ish. There are warm-hearted women who are cut from the same cozy cloth as Aunt Bee, and there is a sensible, attractive, Thelma-Lou type woman who is unaccountably attracted to Mr. Chicken. And Luther's (if that is his name) character bears an astounding resemblance to Deputy Barney.

Can you see the genius here? The filmmakers took what was familiar and safe, used it to lull us into a false sense of security and then gave it a macabre twist. This twist became so frighteningly, um, twisted, that at one point in the movie (involving a creepy staircase, creepy music and a creepy, blood-spattered organ) the young Prude literally, in one giant leap for cowards everywhere,  sprang behind the sofa in a paroxysm of terror.

From that day forward The Prude has had a secret and, to some, irrational fear of curving staircases, ghostly music, and blood-spattered organs. Call her a coward. But she dares you to watch 'The Ghost and Mr. Chicken' at some point during Scary Week.  Just make sure the sofa is pulled away from the wall.