Modernization

In a college town one would expect to be able to find just about anything. Apparently that reality did not make it this far inland. Here we have a university town that has no understanding of cinematic history. Some movies don't even make it into the theatres here, while others occupy every screen for three days at a time. This complaint will focus on the inability to locate two specific movies on DVD: "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" and "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken."

You may have noted my husband's post on the lovely little town where we live and it's shortcomings. I wish to add more to those shortcomings. Let's talk about old movies for a minute here. Wait, they're not even that old, they're from the sixties! In color! You know! But do they exist here? No.

I intended to memorialize Don Knotts by watching the two movies in question back to back. So I sent my hubby off to rent them. When he returned, he had some interesting news. He had been to two major movie rental businesses and even asked at the counter, with no luck. At Blockbuster the girl at the counter started laughing when she heard the titles. She was then surprised to hear that Don Knotts had passed away. After much searching she said that they did have "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" on DVD. However, someone had borrowed it a year earlier and never returned it. My guess is that person was a student and moved out of town taking the movie with them. The next place said they had a very old VHS copy of "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken," but as we have no VCR that did little good. The one nice thing about that place was that the clerk had actually heard of Don Knotts. Craig went to buy the movies or a season of "The Andy Griffith Show," but the local Borders does not stock any of them. Not even a season of the tv show! I would think that'd be a staple in any store that sold DVDs, it was a very popular program.

Upon learning this sad news I decided that I would just buy the DVDs off Amazon.com. I found the first film without any trouble and put it in my Shopping Cart. When I searched for "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" I met with another unexpected surprise. You can buy it on DVD, but it's anywhere from $54.99 to $199.99 and there are only three copies on Amazon. Now, as much as I enjoy that movie I am not paying that much money for it. Imagine my joy when I discovered that if you ordered a set of four movies on DVD for $11.99 you could obtain that one. So, yeah, you can buy the movie by itself for a modest $200 or you can splurge and spend twelve bucks to get that movie along with three other Don Knotts movies. Whatever. The good news is that I will get to see the movies eventually.

The bad news is that I wanted to watch them last night and couldn't. I don't usually care about instant gratification. I was willing to wait however long it would take to go to the store and rent the movies. But the results were somewhat ridiculous. I come from a sleepy town that doesn't even have a dot to locate it on a map and the local library has these two movies. A great big, university town with everything modern you could imagine has a bunch of people who have never even heard of Don Knotts . . . may he rest in peace.