The Love God? (1969)

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Blistering performances.

I saw this after viewing a short clip on you-tube.I thought Mr. Knotts was funny in this movie, but I thought Anne Francis was fantastic. I am not one to notice wardrobe but the wardrobe in this movie really made the film. this is not a great comedy it is cute one. and the idea of smut in the mail given our modern context is really interesting. I loved some of the minor characters.I do want to note that I find it hilarious that user reviews say the mayberry fans/clean cut family types were turned off by this movie. I am sure some of them were. But this movie came in 1969. let's give it some context. Playboy clubs had been open for nine years. this movie obviously is riffing off of Hugh Hefner's empire. the "naughty magazines" with "nude" women in this movie show no T or A. while at the time in the 1960s, actual nudie magazines did. the mock up nude magazine of this movie more fit the pinup culture of the 1940s. secondly, for all the prudes whose movie reviews are actually social editorials, the big spoiler of the movie is that the movie EXPLICITLY STATES that DON KNOTTS is VIRGIN, and the movie ends with his him STILL BEING ONE.Woodstock had happened. people were burning bras. they people whose children watched mayberry now had grown children protesting Vietnam.the rest of film culture had moved to much much grittier work. were stuck up religious nuts turned off by this movie? maybe. But the fact that this film had a more provocative tone may have shown him to a new crowd. To the people that say this was the "end of his career" as a starring man" because it was not family friendly...that is a nice nostaligic narrative. Butthe fact is that he made the Figgs movie as lead man afterwards. And that movie was very clear in its marketing that it was more family friendly. Why? Because Knott's handlers already realized that if he WAS to be leading man material it was solely to the yuck-yuck family friendly crowd. The film industry and America had moved on. Mainstream America thought Don Knott's sort of humor was great in 1964 but by 1971 his comedy could only be marketed to people with small children. Don't get me wrong, as a cinema geek and classic movie lover, I love stuff like Ghost and Mr. Chicken, but you could not sell movie tickets in a regular theater with Don Knotts as star by 1970s, family friendly or not. That is why he stopped being leading man...no market.

The Love God? finds Edmond O'Brien down, but not out as the publisher of a smut magazine where he features his wife Maureen Arthur in many issues. After yet another conviction for selling the pornography, O'Brien gets his fourth class mail permit lifted by the Postmaster General. What to do?Inspiration hits him as he drives through the small town of Peacock Falls where one of the descendent's of the town founder, Don Knotts publishes a magazine for ornithologists that's about to go under. To get that permit, O'Brien agrees to bail Knotts out of debt and even sends him on a trip deep in the Amazon jungle to get a photograph of a rare tropical bird so he can make the necessary editorial changes.A whole lot of good players get involved in this film in which choirmaster and scout leader Don Knotts from his small town is transformed into a Hugh Hefner clone by makeover genius Anne Francis. James Gregory has a marvelous part as a blustering civil liberties attorney, a man who looks like he's traveled the slippery slope often. B.S. Pully is also good as the gangster backer of O'Brien who hams it up outrageously. Of the whole cast Edmond O'Brien looked like he was really enjoying himself.Poor Knotts plays his usual befuddled lugnut of a human being who can't quite grasp all that's swirling around him. Certainly he never thought of himself as The Love God?I wasn't expecting all that much and I was pleasantly surprised that The Love God? turned out better than I thought. Catch it sometime, even if you're not a Don Knotts fan.

Don Knotts got a lot of mileage out of his inept Barney Fife character which he played in a series of movies throughout the 1960s (he won four or five straight Emmys so you have to give him credit). Most of his movie rip-offs were forgettable but not "The Love God?" Then and now, the movie is a social satire and a commentary on public morals. I'm not sure that is exactly what Knotts intended but that is what results. Knotts is Abner Peacock, the publisher of Peacock's Magazine, a bird-watcher journal which is in bankruptcy. Osborn Trelaine comes to his rescue with capital to save the magazine. What Abner doesn't know, and doesn't find out until he returns from a bird expedition, is that Trelaine is a pornographer. As soon as he returns to America, Abner is arrested for obscenity. The trial that follows is hilarious as Knotts' famous lawyer lambasts him and tells the country how disgusted he is to be representing such a degenerate. But because he loves liberty, he has to do it. Abner is acquitted and now finds himself to be considered to be a Casanova by every woman in America. His lawyers, his family and the pornographers convince him that it is his patriotic duty to put out a filthy magazine and prove to the world how free a country the US is. "But I don't know the first thing about publishing filth!" he objects. "You're young! You can learn!" he's told. With the luscious Anne Francis as his editor Abner then becomes the front for the most popular sex magazine of all time. Trouble is, while America thinks he's bopping models three at a time, he's actually a virgin and intimidated by women (except the faithful Rose Ellen who waits to marry him.). The funniest sequence of the movie is a musical montage of Abner living the jet-set life and appearing at a string of nightclubs. His hilarious rendition of "Summer in the Meadow" ("by Eloise W. Fetlock") is also unforgettable. Don Knotts never made a better movie and the social commentary hasn't diminished one iota in the over 30 yrs since it was released.

Throughout the 1960s, Don Knotts enjoyed box office success with a series of wholesome, family-oriented comedies for Universal. At the end of the decade, Universal took a gamble by starring Don Knotts in a mildly risque social satire, THE LOVE GOD? Contemporary filmgoers responded coolly to this film, but it has stood the test of time as both a witty lampoon of media manipulation and a fine showcase of Knotts's talents.Knotts plays Abner Peacock, the mild-mannered editor of a floundering bird-watching magazine, The Peacock. Osborn Tremaine (Edmund O'Brien) takes over the publication. While Abner's away on a bird-watching safari, Osborn transforms The Peacock into a pornography magazine. When Abner returns, he finds himself with a notorious reputation.Director/writer Nat Hiken (the genius behind THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW and CAR 54 WHERE ARE YOU?) humorously examined the way the media and special interest groups distort people's images for their own self interests. A civil liberties lawyer (James Gregory) who represents Peacock when he's arrested by the FBI presents his client as an experienced smut peddler instead of an unwitting dupe so he can pursue his theories of Constitutional free speech law. The press perpetuates the myth of Abner as a "filthy little degenerate sex fiend" because it makes great copy. And the new editor of Peacock (Anne Francis) insists that he cultivate the image of a debonair womanizer because his scandalous publicity has boosted the magazine's sales.As played by the goofy looking, geeky acting Knotts, Abner is laughably unconvincing as a Hugh Hefner type. The comic incongruity of this situation is enhanced by the ladies' swooning reaction over him as if he was Adonis reborn. Hiken satirically demonstrates in these sequences how the media can make the public go wild over certain individuals they would normally scoff and ignore.If Hiken provides the film's bite, then Don Knotts provides the film's heart. As in his other films, he is a klutzy nerd who seems easily manipulated by others. But Knotts also provides a beguiling innocence and a folksy amiability that wins the audience over, making them root for him to succeed. THE LOVE GOD? is an underappreciated highlight in Knotts' career.