Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Right Kind of House (03/09/58)

ahprightkind02Well, right kind is a very subjective term.

Mr. Waterbury sees a sign for Ivy Corners, population 6,000 and seems to like the cut of the town’s jib.  Although, if I know AHP, the population will soon be 5,999.

He goes to the real estate office of Aaron Hacker to inquire about a house that he has his eye on.  Even though Hacker has the listing on the house, he tries to steer Waterbury to another home. Waterbury offers $9,500, but the owner Sadie Grimes is asking $50,000, possibly explaining why it has been on the market for 5 years.

Waterbury goes to see Sadie and shocks her and Hacker by agreeing to buy to house for the outrageous $50,000.  As if that isn’t enough, she pulls the geezer trick of giving him a lemonade and making him listen to an interminable story about people he doesn’t know  Sadie tells him about her dead youngest son who had gone to the big city and become very successful.  He used to send her money every month, but something went awry.ahprightkind01

Michael never told his mother about his problems, but he showed up in the middle of one night after 9 years. He just claimed to be sick of his job, so he quit and came home to mommy for a few weeks.  In reality, he admits he was fired and is very protective of a little black bag he was carrying.

He hung out for a long time, never going out.  And this was in the days before ESPN, blogging and internet porn, so what did I — er, he — he do all day?  His mother treated him like Little Lord Clavin, but the black bag was never seen again, and she never searched for it, having little interest in porn.

One night, it ended as he got late night visitors who were either the rest of his gang or the most persuasive Jehovah’s Witnesses ever.  When Michael would not donate the loot, whatever their identities, they killed him (although to be fair, that doesn’t sound like a Jehovah’s Witness).  The sheriff tells his mother that Michael had been a naughty boy in New York.  He and three other men had held up a bank and stolen $200,000.  Michael ended up ahprightkind03with all the loot, see?

An insurance investigator with the sheriff is more interested in finding the $200,000.  Ms. Grimes denies seeing the money or even the black bag. That was 5 years ago, and she immediately put the house up for sale for $50,000.  She asks Waterbury if he thinks the bank would accept $50,000 as full restitution for the theft.  He seems to think so after this long.

Waterbury has caught her in a lie about the little black bag, and she readily admits it. She was waiting for the only person in the world who would pay $50,000 for this modest house — a person who thought there was $200,000 hidden inside.  And that would be the man who killed her boy — her 40 year old boy.  He would have been on his own gwown-up health care plan for 14 years.

ahprightkind05Waterbury smugly tells her that she shouldn’t have told him this story until after she called the police.  She calmly replies that she didn’t tell him the story until after he drank the lemonade. LOL.  OK, that deserves my second ever 🙂 .

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch: James Drury is still with us.
  • So I guess the population will indeed go down to 5,998 as Waterbury croaks and Ms. Grimes is sent to the big house.

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