Dorothy and her mother Ida drive up to a General Store.  Wait, something’s not right here.  Dorothy is portrayed by frequent guest star Pat Hitchcock and she is not playing her usual  maid, schoolmarm, spinster, or office Nottie.  Kudos to Pat for persevering, pulling herself up by her bootstraps, and demanding more glamorous roles . . . from her father.

They go in to pick up some supplies.  Ida is going to clean up the family cabin so they can sell it.  The old proprietor tells them the big news about “the one that got away this morning.  One of them patients busted loose from the rest home.”

Dorothy tries to persuade her mother to not stay alone at the cabin with a killer on the loose, but ma is adamant.  She will stay there alone, clean the cabin, show it to the realtor, and Dorothy will pick her up Sunday.  She buys enough groceries to feed the exodus and they go to the cabin for Ida’s two-day stay alone.

Dorothy, who I guess has been taking krav maga classes, wants to stay to protect her mother, but Ida throws her out.  Ida doesn’t have a watch, so Dorothy gives her the correct time to set the old Cuckoo Clock on the wall.  Her late husband gave it to her on their anniversary, although it was their 5th, so it might not have been the wood she was hoping for.  Ida sets it ahead a few minutes so the bird pops out and cuckoos.  Surely this time-jump will be important later . . . the whole episode probably depends on it!

Later that night, Ida gets chilly so puts on some coffee and decides to build a fire.  She goes out to the garage to get some wood.  When she returns to the cabin, I had an odd thought.  In these old shows, you never see that shot where a camera pans across the set to reveal an unobserved person just standing silently and motionless (as in The Strangers, Hereditary, etc).  It can be a very chilling shot.  Then, damn if they didn’t do it!  This show rules! ^[1]

Ida finally sees the person and understandably shrieks.  The woman says her name is Madeline.  Ida — formal to the end, which could be any second — identifies herself as Mrs. Blythe.  Madeline said she was out for a hike and got nervous after hearing about the man on the loose.  She wants to use the phone — sorry not connected yet.  Or get a ride back to town — sorry, my daughter took the car.

There is a knock at the door.  Madeline slaps her hand over Ida’s mouth and says, “Don’t answer that door!”  There are a few more knocks, then the person seems to go away.  OMG, what a shriek!  Oh, it is the tea kettle.

Well, everything’s OK now.  The gals sit down to have some chamomile tea.  Madeline begins crying because she is very worried . . . about the killer’s feelings.

He is “wandering around alone, out there in the darkness . . . with nowhere to go . . . nowhere in the whole world . . . because everybody’s against him.  No wonder he’s so full of hate.”  I think we can rule out Madeline being the escapee from the mental institution; she has more likely escaped from the local university.

Madeline says, “Haven’t you ever hurt so much that you want to hurt back?”  Ida says, “No, of course not.”  Madeline replies, “No, of course you haven’t” no doubt endowing Ida with multiple privileges.  Then, quite appropriately, the cuckoo pops out of the titular cuckoo clock and cuckoos.  Indeed.

Madeline looks at the perspicacious bird and tells Ida a story about her Aunt Dora who had a similar clock.  She says Ida reminds her of Dora — tall, lives alone, sensible, nice ass.  Dora had a canary and one day just cut its head off with her pinking shears.  Her point is “I just wanted to show you how it can happen.  Even to calm, sensible, ordinary people when they’re filled with hate.  And some of them don’t stop with canaries!”

Madeline jumps up to leave, afraid the man will return.  So she is going to run outside . . . just in case he returns to the locked and shuttered cabin?  Is this chick crazy?

Ida pleads with her to not leave.  She is equally afraid of Madeline being killed, and of herself being left alone.  Madeline admits she made up the story about the canary.  Ida inexplicably begs this nut to stay until the phone is connected.  Ida then asks if Madeline made up the canary story just to frighten her.  Madeline admits that was the reason and starts crying.  She says her doctor sent her away for “a rest” but that she was at a hotel, not the institution, because she’s not crazy.  That claim is called into question, however, when she reveals it is a Motel 6.  She was fine until she saw the man.

Ida screams, “There was no man!”  Immediately, there is a knock at the door and Ida is terrified it is the man . . . she does remember he knocked earlier, right?  She just has to see who it is, though, so she opens the door.  It’s OK, it has one of those chains with the paperclip-sized links.  It is a cop who tells her the escapee was actually a woman.

Blah blah.  Ida pushes Madeline down and she is left unconscious or dead.  Ida lets the man in, but he quickly reveals himself as the escapee.  The cuckoo clock goes off again, and he claims it is mocking him.  He tears it off the wall and throws it on the floor.  The canary is on the floor and its head has popped off.   The man stabs Ida, then — no kidding — stabs the little cardboard canary. ^[2]

Who am I to question Robert Bloch, the writer of this episode?  He is one of the greats and wrote for all of the major magazines and TV series of his era.  He even wrote the classic Psycho (although not the screenplay).  But this just doesn’t feel like a final draft.  The odd thing is, he made significant changes to the original story, so he could have tightened it up.

What exactly is the point of the Madeline character?  Are we supposed to think she is the real escapee?  Yes, in the beginning, with the jump scare.  And certainly at the end when Ida pushes her down.  But what of the time in between?  She is clearly a nut, but Ida alternates between protecting her and being afraid of her.  I never really got the sense until the end that Ida — standing in for the audience — thought she might really be the killer.

Ida seemed a little on edge for the whole episode.  I know she lost her husband, but that was a year ago.  She was going to a idyllic country cabin, but it was not for rest or recuperation.  She was going with a mission — to prepare it for sale.  Were we supposed to think she was an unreliable narrator or that her own anxieties were altering her perception of Madeline?  I don’t think so, but I am otherwise at a loss.

Why is the cuckoo clock so important that the episode was named after it?  It did not even appear in the original short story.  It plays no role here that I can see.  Early on, Dorothy notes that Ida set it ahead to hear the cuckoo sound.  I thought surely that would be important at the end.  But no.

The killer stabs Ida.  OK, killers gonna kill.  It was fun that the canary’s head came off just like in Dora’s story, but is there some meaning there that I’m missing?  And after stabbing Ida, why would he stab the little canary.  What is he, craz . . . oh.  All seriousness aside, though, what the hell? ^[2]

Beatrice Straight was a little off-key, but still great.  She is a tall, elegant, classy dame with piercing eyes.  I enjoyed her performance, but I think she needed to re-calibrate it a little bit.  She had done a lot of stage work, and she seemed to be projecting to the back row here.  In the beginning, I thought she was shouting at the store manager because he was old and deaf.  But her tone didn’t change much later.  Still, she is such a great presence that I’m surprised I did not remember her from Special Delivery.  Sadly, this is her last AHP appearance.

Enjoyable, but could have been better.

Other Stuff:

• [1] It was preceded by a sweeping proscenium shot which I guess sub-consciously tipped me off.  Even if it was telegraphed, it still chilled me watching it a 2nd time.
• [2] Your mileage may vary.  Others think she screams because she sees the canary being stabbed and knows she is next.  But he told her to “look at the clock” not to look at the canary, which had been ejected from its home. On the other hand, before he stabbed the canary, we did not hear Ida’s lithe, smokin’ body collapse to the floor.
• Beatrice Straight was the head ghostbuster in Poltergeist.  No, the good one.
• She also played Hippolyta a couple of times on the 1970s Wonder Woman.  The same character was played by Connie Neilsen in the recent movie.
• “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love.  They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” — The Third Man.
• For more info and some great detective work on the episode, check out bare*bonez e-zine.
• Also, read To Build a Fire; it really is great.