1969’s The Love God? is the only one of the five films on Shout Factory’s Don Knotts collection that is rated higher than a G. I was very surprised to see it is rated PG-13. Now, having watched it, I’m even more surprised it is rated higher than a PG. Typical of the other films on this collection, this is sitcom-level humor. But even the strongest of this material (even the word “strong” is quite an overstatement) here is pitched at about the level of such shows roughly a decade later. It’s no surprise Knotts played a character on Three’s Company around that time, because this material would have fit in there.
This time, he’s the publisher of very unpopular magazine Peacock Magazine, which is about birds of the feathered variety, declaring itself to be “The finest bird magazine in the world.” He’s such a fan of our avian friends, that he has the ability to imitate the calls of a great many kinds of them. We first see him doing this accompanied by music at a fundraiser, ending his performance with a hilariously enthusiastic impersonation of an eagle, complete with the wild arm flapping. There will also be a hilarious callback to this bit towards the end of the film.
That fundraiser generates $47,000 shy of what it will take save the publication. Swooping in to supposedly save is Edmund O’Brien, a publisher of a girly mag Nude & Naughty, that seems to have none of the former and only a touch of the latter. He has lost his fourth-class mail permit, and Knotts has one. Now he can continue publishing Knotts’s magazine with a different kind of bird. He can even keep the same slogan, given “birds” was a popular slang word for comely young women back in the 60’s.
Our lead is oblivious to what has been happening, as O’Brien sent him out of the country on a wild goose chase. Well, it’s not a goose exactly. I can’t remember the name of the rare bird Knotts is dispatched to get a photo of, but there’s a great bit where the bird he thinks he’s been luring is just another enthusiast using the same call. In the meantime, he’s unaware of an international manhunt for him the FBI has initiated. That they did this for obscenity charges, let alone for a magazine so tame the Amish might possibly not take offense, seems ludicrous.
That’s just the setup for a rather complicated plot which involves a great many more key players than I would expect for such fare. There’s B.S. Pully as a superficially reformed gangster now heading a network of companies, who will forcefully take over publishing operations from O’Brien. He puts Anne Francis in charge of reformatted magazine that will combine sex and classiness, in what is obviously a riff on Playboy. She has the world’s top photographers do pictorials of the world’s most beautiful women, which means the magazine’s former staple, O’Brien’s wife Maureen Arthur, is out of a job. And back at home, there’s the ridiculously naïve and optimistic Maggie Peterson as a woman madly in love with Knotts and waiting for him to propose marriage. There’s many other characters I could single out, but these are the main ones I feel likely commenting on here.
Once Knotts has been apprehended by the authorities, he stands trial for obscenity. A famous attorney played by James Gregory defends him, but only because he can exploit this opportunity, turning it into a very public freedom of speech case. Even in his defense of his client, he portrays Knotts as a man with insatiable lusts and bedroom eyes. Just the idea of anybody describing our lead as having bedroom eyes is a hilarious concept. But this change in public perception leads to seemingly every woman now regarding him as ladies man.
Francis realizes that persona is critical to the success of the magazine, and uses Knotts in a way that maximizes the potential for him to be its mascot. She puts him up in the ugliest penthouse I think I’ve ever seen, where his wait staff is four women in French maid outfits. There are four additional young women who are the “Peacock Pussycats”, who will accompany him to all public appearances. And Knotts will be dressed in a jaw-dropping series of deliriously bad clothing combinations of the likes not even Prince could pull off.
That wardrobe is meant to be laughably bad, and is a good example of the satire of various trends and social mores. It may take only the most gentle of pokes at its subjects, but they are more spot-on than many potshots taken at the same things by films that are far more acerbic. Some of those targets include the sexual revolution, college protests, fashion and the public’s fickle nature.
I liked many of the characters. Francis has some agency at first, until she finds herself inexplicably enchanted by Knotts. Can’t she be the editor of a high-end skin mag and a woman, too? It made me wonder how Christine Heffner felt when she took over operations of the Playboy empire from her dad. But I found Pully, though he’s not in the movie for long, to be the most interesting character. He’s forever trying to better himself, and delights in using the new word he has added to his vocabulary each day.
Unfortunately, all good will I felt towards him dissolved when he repeatedly threatens Francis for her rejection of his amorous advances. The movie also regards Peterson in a strange way, openly mocking the innocence of her character, while that of Knotts is celebrated in the end. Still, I enjoyed a recurring gag where she sits on the front porch of the house the same night week after week, expecting our hero to follow through on his promise yet again to propose marriage to her there. At one point, she’s out there in the snow as Christmas music plays on the soundtrack. But I was baffled by a pointless bit where Knotts actually socks her in the jaw, ostensibly to keep from getting hurt by Pully and his goons. That doesn’t scan well, regardless of his intentions.
The Love God? is an odd movie. It likely would have been my favorite of the films Knotts starred in for Universal, if not for some curious missteps it makes along the way. That’s a shame, because this overall gentle film has some surprisingly trenchant insights into the sexual revolution and other trends of the late 1960’s. Apparently, the film touched a nerve with some audiences who blanched at the idea of a Knotts film with even extremely mild innuendo, and some theaters reportedly wouldn’t even screen it. How I would love to whisk some of those people from their time to the present day, so I could see how quickly they would have an aneurysm.
Dir: Nat Hiken
Starring Don Knotts, Anne Francis, Edmond O’Brien
Watched as part of Shout Factory’s blu-ray set Don Knotts: 5 Film Collection