THE LOVE GOD

d. Nat Hiken
USA, 1969

Prior to this screening, all we knew of THE LOVE GOD was the premise, "Don Knotts mistaken for a pornographer" and that it was made in 1969.

From this, we had a reasonable expectation that THE LOVE GOD would be an awkward, stilted attempt by a Hollywood studio to be keep up with then-current challenges to conventional social standards and the rapidly shifting tastes of their audiences by forcing a timely theme into a familiar setting with a familiar star.

Imagine our delight, then, when THE LOVE GOD turned out to be just enough of that, but also something other than that. Yes, THE LOVE GOD is a Don Knotts film about porn, but THE LOVE GOD also plays off its own pedigree in a number of surprising and subversive ways.

If you are a Don Knotts fan and have not seen THE LOVE GOD, by all means see it before you venture into the spoiler-laden territory below. Much of the delight to be had from the film is due to it going to unexpected places, and we'd hate to ruin your fun.

The spoilers begin after this frame grab of the gorgeous Universal logo from 1969 which opens THE LOVE GOD.

THE LOVE GOD opens with a lawyer delivering an appeal to a judge on behalf of his pornographer client, Osborn Tremaine, painting the man's trade as high art in florid terms. Sweaty Edmund O'Brien, looking one highball away from passing out in his trailer, plays Tremaine.

This is the opening gag in the film, and the payoff comes as the judge goes through the evidence.

With this initial gag, THE LOVE GOD demonstrates that it is something other than the awkward studio mess it might have been. Hollywood rarely portrays porn accurately, much less in a light comedy of this sort, but these are spot-on imitations of a specific variety of 3rd rate, sub-Playboy, men's magazines of the era. Not only that, but where one might expect the sexuality of the model to be softened with coyness or deflected with a joke, what's presented is as boldly salacious as the real thing.

The dialogue goes even further when Osborne has his 4th class mailing license revoked by the attorney general, crippling his ability to send his product through the mail. This was an actual tactic used against pornography by the postal service and the attorney general's office during the era. It is quite a surprise to see this legal detail pop up here. It is the first of several elements in THE LOVE GOD which make it clear that someone involved with the writing was famliar with the realities of the porn industry of the time.

Tremaine and wife (who he calls "mother" throughout the film) go on the road with their lawyer, distraught over the loss of their 4th class permit.

When they stop for lunch, it happens to be in the same small town where Peacock's Magazine - an amateur ornithologist's magazine - is facing foreclosure after 149 years of publication.

At this point, the film enters Universal's version of the Mayberry / Disneyverse in which the previous Don Knotts features were set.

The deacon's daughter - Knotts's hometown love interest - drifts through the film with this stoned look on her dace the entire time. This is too constant and too obvious to not be deliberate, but it's a mystery what it is meant to convey.

Tremaine, of course, scams Abner Peacock into letting him publish Peacock's Magazine so he can get at Peacock's 4th class mailing license. Tremaine sends Abner on a trip to Brazil, and in the interim remakes Peacock's Magazine as a porn rag. When Abner manages to find his way back to civilization, he is shown the magazine as he returns to American soil.