The ghost and Mr. Chicken: Knotts plays a small town typesetter with dreams of becoming a reporter who agrees to spend a night in an allegedly haunted house.

The reluctant astronaut: Knotts plays a small-town amusement park ride operator with a fear of heights who gets a job with NASA--as a janitor. He gets to confront his fear of heights when NASA devises a program to send a civilian into space.

The shakiest gun in the west: Knotts plays a dental school graduate out to bring oral hygiene to the west, who, with the help of a woman gunslinger tracking gunsmugglers who happened to marry him, becomes known as a feared gunslinger himself.

The love god?: Knotts plays the editor of a bird-watcher's magazine bought out by a group which turns it into a "girlie-magazine" and keeps him on as the editor, with a new life-style to match.