Beware of Don Knotts!

I have recently been reminded of why it is necessary to be vigilant about what our children are exposed to. We have a collection of Don Knotts' movies that was given to us. It has 4 movies, 3 of which I had previously seen with the kids. These include "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken", "The Reluctant Astronaut" and "The Shakiest Gun in the West". All funny movies, the kids liked them. The 4th one we never got around to watching, I didn't even know the title of it, and I had never even looked closely at the write up on it from the back of the case. So Sunday, I was in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner. The kids were supposed to be getting ready for bed, but we weren't in any rush for that, so some were reading, and playing around. Halie, apparently, decided to put in a movie. She put in the movie in question. She came up to the kitchen and asked if I had watched all the Don Knotts' movies in that collection. I honestly thought I had, so I said "yes" and was trying to remember all 4 of them, but was drawing a blank on #4. When I asked her why, she said that she had started to watch it, but turned it off because it had some really gross stuff in it. It really seemed to disturb her, so I told her Daddy and I would watch it and see what was going on. I didn't think a Don Knotts movie would be bad, and couldn't figure out why she seemed upset. So we put it on after the kids went to bed. Let me tell you about the movie.

It's called "The Love God?". It is PG 13, unlike all the others, which are Not Rated, but would be G. Don Knotts plays his typical mild mannered, small town oaf. In this movie, he owns a magazine about birds. This magazine is in a financial mess, and he is bought out by an unscrupulous publisher of a girlie magazine, so they can use his mailing rights. He is clueless about what is going on, since he's been shipped off to Timbuktu to photograph some rare bird. He's sued for mailing smut, but gets off because of Free Speech. There's a bunch more stuff that goes on, but the rest of the movie shows what happens to him after the trial...he's pursued by lots of women and lives the life of a playboy, while the magazine continues to be published. The first few minutes of the movie, which Halie apparently saw, show the unscrupulous publisher in court, having his mailing license revoked for sending smut through the mail. It shows the covers of several of his magazines. They were quite shocking, even to me. Naked women with strategically placed banners, very disgusting headlines and such. Poor Halie! No wonder she thought it was gross! I apologized to her the next day, and told her that one was definitely not for the kids to watch. Now I have to figure out what to do with the movie. The 4 pack comes in a 2 sided DVD, with 2 movies on each side. I can't just get rid of the one movie. And the kids like the other ones. I might have to see if I can find them all in singles, and just get rid of the collection. We have movies that are not kid friendly(nothing rated R, but PG 13 movies are not age appropriate for my kids), but we keep them separate from the kids movies. This movie, quite frankly, isn't even one I'd want to keep anyway. I guess I learned a bunch this weekend!