Disney Movie Review: **Hot Lead and Cold Feet (1978)

 This is not Disney's best effort.  They had so much back fighting all the time it was hard to focus on the story.  In this movie Jim Dale portrays three rolls: the father who fakes his death to get his sons together, and smoke out a crocked mayor, and his sons, Wild Bill and gun fighter and Jasper a Salvation Army member from Philadelphia.  In Bloodshy Don Knotts portrays the sheriff, and Jack Elam who feuds with the sheriff throughout the store. I am not sure why they are feuding and by the end of the show it is obnoxious.  

***Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979)

Bringing Don Knotts and Tim Conway together was genius; and to use them as often as possible even more so.  Granted there are some plot holes in this movie, and nothing as funny as the fire ladder scene in the first, this movie has lots to laugh at.  It has women falling in the mud, Knotts/Conway slapstick, and just enough plot to give us a story, albeit a little canned.  Clarice the donkey almost teals the show with his loyalty to Tim Conway.  He keeps coming back even when he is not wanted.

Movie Review: **^No Deposit, No Return

This is a sweet little Disney take on O. Henry's "Ransom of Red Chief" except in this case it is a brother and sister, and they are running away and happen to take the same cab as a couple safe-crackers who are getting away after a botched robbery attempt.  The mob is pressuring our robbers for money (Don Knotts and Darren McGavin).  Don Knotts where he is nervous, rattling his hot chocolate cup with a spoon, remembering the sirens.  The noises he makes are hilarious.  He then ends up in a construction project with a bucket on his head, and is saved by a crane.  Who knows how he got out there, but it had to do with saving a skunk which belongs to one of the kids.  This movie has a theme similar to "Savannah Smiles" except in this case it is the mother (Barbara Feldon) who has neglected her children (Kim Richards, Brad Savage).  The kids send a kidnapping note to grandfather, hoping to get money to travel to Hong Kong to see their mother over Easter break.  Grandfather (David Niven)  knows where the kids are, but is enjoying the peace and quiet of there being someplace else rather than with him as they tend to destroy his home.  Instead it is our small time crooks who suffer.  Of course when the mob steps in to take over the kidnap things take a change for the worse.

Movie Review: ****^The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

This was one of my favorite scary time movies growing up.  Even with the explanations at the end, and seeing it so many times, it still scares me.  Don Knotts plays Luther Heggs, a wanna be reporter who falls for a challenge to spend a night in a haunted house where a murder took place some years before.  Only as Don Knotts can, he sets himself up in a sleeping bag, and when the house really turns out to be haunted, he runs away in terror.  No one can do a scared face like Don Knotts.  He writes of his night, and becomes a local celebrity,  However when he is sued for slander, he takes the court to the house, and it doesn't appear to be haunted.  Knotts' love interest is Alma Parker (Joan Staley).  A great line in this movie "Atta boy Luther."  This movie has cobwebs, bleeding scissors and a self playing organ. Cool!!!

Movie Review: ***^The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)

This is a Disney movie that was on KBYU.  It features the slap stick comedy of Don Knotts and Tim Conway as Theodore and Amos.  They play a couple of washed out outlaws.  They are the redeeming quality of this show.  It is hilarious when Amos lights his companion's rear end on fire.  He then has used his last match, and lights his cigarette on the smoldering behind.  And the bit with the firetruck ladder is just as funny.
On the other hand, this movie is about three orphans, and the couple who adopt them.  I found much of this syrupy and over done.  The younger sister kept having to go potty, and that wasn't humorous, especially not the upteenth time.  There was a ride in a mining cart which just wasn't believable. 
The movie did have some real outlaws, the Stillwell gang, with Frank Stillwell played by Slim Pickens.  Amos and Theodore were part of the gang until Amos accidentally shot Stillwell in the leg.  It is funny when they meet again.
If you like Knotts and Conway, this movie is fun.  If you don't you had best skip it.