Sometimes I kind of feel that way about Alfred Hitchcock Presents — a guy commits a murder and accidentally incriminates himself.  The end.  Episode S3E38, for example.

It is set in 1916, but could be anytime; it is set in England, but could be anywhere; the lead actor is an American, but could have been any nationality; the thief / killer was a lawyer . . . actually, that seems about right.

Solicitor Henry Daw (Hume Cronyn) who is also the Mayor-elect, gets a visit from Miss Wilkinson whom he has not seen in 9 years.  Miss Wilkinson tells Daw’s sister that she must be proud that he was just elected Mayor.  She says she is a little worried about taking on the role of Mayoress.  That’s another trend in AHP — men who are freakishly close to their sister.

Miss W tells Daw that she wishes to withdraw her investments from his management. She has an opportunity to double her money in 6 months due to a business proposition from a Nigerien Prince.  No wait, it’s her brother — it’s AHP, of course his sister is going to be his partner.  Business partner.

Sadly, Daw has spent Miss W’s investment on 18 year old hookers, 20 year old scotch, and wasted the rest (coincidentally, that joke is also from 1916).

The next time we see Daw, he is digging one of those perfect graves that any slob seems to be able to dig on TV.  To AHP’s credit, at least he does break a sweat.  That might be because he dug it while wearing a vest and necktie.  Also the back-breaking digging.

That night, he strangles Miss W, which we witness as shadows on the wall.  He throws her over his shoulder like Jessica Tandy and takes her to the waiting grave.  Daw’s sister is awakened by him going down the stairs, but there is no indication that she witnesses any shenanigans.  Maybe she was just jealous.

After he places Miss W in the grave (off-camera), we see that he has covered her with an exposed cement slab that doesn’t look at all out-of-place is this marshy area alongside the river.  As he is walking away, he seems to realize that he has forgotten something.  He puts a few shovel-fulls of dirt in a bucket, walks to the river, and dumps the dirt in the water.  To be honest, it took me a while to realize we just saw the first iteration of him getting rid of the dirt that Miss W’s body displaced.

To create the illusion that Miss W left on her own, Daw dresses up like a widowed Mulsim Invisible Woman going to work as a beekeeper near a Haz-Mat Facility in the Antarctic with fabric covering every inch of his body, including a scarf around his face. He then takes a carriage to the train station and heads toward Miss W’s home.

During the dedication of a war memorial, a body is spotted floating down the river.  The police believe it could be Miss W and call Daw to identify the body.  Through a merry mix-up, Daw believes he has been caught in a lie and confesses to the murder — only to find that if he had kept his yap shut for 2 more minutes he would have gotten away with it.

Despite feeling a little familiar, another fine outing.  Hume Cronyn, especially, was very good, but then he was a highly regarded actor until he was 112 ^[1].  I also enjoyed the locations used.  When AHP starts with a title card establishing a non-US location, I always start out with a little dread, but this worked out nicely with great interiors and exteriors.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] I see upon further research, he was only 91 when he died.
• AHP Deathwatch:  David Frankham (“Holsom”) is still alive.  I’m not sure who his character was, and I’m not going back.
• Title Analysis: Not exactly impromptu.  The murder was planned at least  several hours in advance.  Daw did the all-important prep-work of site-location, digging the hole, creating an intricate alibi, and procuring boots, a shovel and a bucket.
• Words ending in U — more than you would think.

On board a literal slow boat to China, Laura Bowlby is using a Ouija Board to steal money from unsuspecting rubes, much like the producers of Ouija.  Her husband James St. George Bernard Bowlby has invited her to be with him in Hong Kong where is he working for a bank which I’m sure is entirely reputable.

We see her do a reading with an Asian man for which he lauds her. Her performance is impressive as the Ouija Board produces an answer in Chinese, which she does not speak; and even more impressive, as there are no Chinese characters on the board.  She also established her bona fides earlier by telling the bartender where he was born.

Laura is greeted at the port by her husband who immediately has to take off to oversee an acquisition.  He leaves Laura with is assistant and asks him to order her cards with her name engraved on them.  Apparently, this is a thing in Hong Kong — new people give out cards of introduction.  As the cards read Mrs. J. St. G. B. Bowlby, they really aren’t much of an introduction for Laura.

He tells Thompson to rent a car and driver from Nixon’s Garage as he is a reliable fellow.  I wonder if this was some sort of sly political reference to buying a used car from then Vice-President Richard Nixon.  He suggests a sight-seeing drive to Repulse Bay which is a real place and must be better than it sounds.

At the garage, Laura is immediately draw to a particular car.  She says she would like it better if it were canary yellow.  The salesman tells her it originally was that color.  So apparently she is a Silver Ghost-Whisperer also.

Laura (Jessica Tandy) gets in the car and begins her 30-year career of being driven around by non-white men.  Along the way, she hears a ghostly voice say, “You’re so silly Jacques.”  It is implied that the voice is coming from a flower in a sconce in the car.

AHP (1958), Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

The next day, James St. George Bernard is back in town.  The Bowlby’s are riding in the car and Laura says, “I’m sorry I upset you Jim, about the car.”  James St. George Bernard replies, “Oh, I just felt it was too big for our needs.”  So the script seems to indicate this is different car.  However, it looks the same, the upholstery is the same, and it has the same sconce with a talking flower in it.  A different car is not necessary to the story, so I am baffled by this reference.

She takes the flower from the sconce and hears voices again.  This time, the woman’s voice describes her house and the driver is able to find it for Laura.  An old man answers and says there is no woman there.  After the man closes his door, as in every post on this blog, Laura feels free to open a gate to his China Garden (not the one by the airport) and walk right in.

It is a lovely garden with a brook, a bridge, some sort of exotic bird.  It’s all fun and games if you describe fun as breaking and games as entering. Laura is all smiles until she sees a carved stone by the water.

Sweetest Love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, They who one another keep alive,

Ne’er parted be.

Which is more fun and games if you define fun as cheating and games as bastard.  The inscription at the bottom is ADA and JstGBB.  She had determined that the disembodied voice was a woman named d’Ardennes (I’m not sure A first name was mentioned), and of course, we now understand the point of the writer giving her husband that ridiculously unique moniker.

Not a lot going on here, but it is a unique episode in that there is a supernatural element which is never exposed as fakery.  There still are questions, though.  Why was the flower the conduit for the voices?  Didn’t Francois (husband of Madam A. d’Ardennes) object to having another man’s love for his wife carved into a rock in his garden?

Nothing great going on here, and I’m disappointed to see AHP stray into the paranormal. Still, Jessica Tandy was quite good and the stock footage of Hong Kong was nicely cut in.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Once again, Nixon got the last laugh.
• OK, the driver is still alive also.

There is a new manager at the bank. When a customer begins chatting with teller George Piper, he mentions that the source of his income is from playing cards and getting his opponents get drunk (just like casinos).  Piper tells Mr. Manett that he should keep that quiet because the new manager might not approve of such immorality and could close Manett’s account.  Of course, this was the old days before a bank could piss away billions and be bailed out by corrupt politicians and tax-paying suckers.

Piper goes out to lunch with a much younger girl in the bank.  He looks older than his 47 years, and Millie looks younger than her age of 30.  George, despite being a bald, pudgy, bow-tied bank teller is apparently quite a player.  Millie notes that he has asked out a lot of the girls at the bank, but nothing — I assume meaning marriage — ever comes of it.

That night, we see George on the phone with another girl, Barbara.  He is wearing a lovely smoking jacket over his still bow-tied shirt.  His brother Fred drops by — taller, thinner, hairier and wearing a straight tie. Fred has dropped by with an investment opportunity, and doesn’t seem too concerned over where the capital comes from.  That starts George thinking.  If he were to embezzle, steal or extort some cash, where would he hide it.

The next day, Manett comes into the bank to get $15,000 in cash out of his account.  That night, Piper goes to see Manett at his home.  Piper says he thinks he might have given Manett too much cash. To his credit, Manett seems to be a pretty nice guy.  He doesn’t question Piper coming to his home, and pulls out the cash to recount it.  When Manett produces the cash, George shoots him.

The next morning, George places the money in the safest place he can think of — the bank.  Not in the vault, but hidden in a drawer.  A detective shows up investigating Manett’s murder.  He asks George if they know the serial numbers on the $15,000 he withdrew.  The branch manager is concerned that having such a shady customer will hurt his chances at becoming a vice-president at the bank — this isn’t HSBC, after all.  So not only as this a time when banks were honest, this was apparently a time when 75% of the employees were not vice-presidents.

The branch manager fires George for not telling him where Manett’s money came from.  He brings in another man and gives him a field promotion to head teller.  He won’t even let George balance out his drawer — which now contains an extra 15 large.

I’m not a stickler for logic or even reality.  In fact, the old bald guy getting all the young chicks is sounding better and better to me.  But there was just too much bizarre in this episode to give it much grounding.  I don’t know that banks ever cared where their customers got their cash.  Having a customer murdered would certainly bring no disrepute to a bank — we’re not talking about drug dealers and terrorists here.

There really is no through-line of suspense or dread or anticipation as there usually is in AHP episodes.  And why would anyone — especially a teller with 30 years experience — ever think the best place to hide money was in the bank?

Really just a lazy outing.  Still, I’m sure it is better than what is coming tomorrow.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Only Joanna Linville (Millie) survives.  She also played a Romulan Commander on Star Trek.
• Phillip Pine (Manett) was also on an episode of Star Trek.

Jack Lyons (a 30-year old Denholm Elliott (Marcus Brody from  every prime-numbered Indiana Jones movie)) stops on a deserted road, blocking the car behind him.  As the other driver gets out of his car to investigate, Lyons kills him.  Lyons looks in the other car.  He sees the titular crocodile dressing-case with the dreaded initials P.C. but leaves it in the car.

That night at a party, Phyllis Chaundry is wondering where her husband is.  Lyons gallantly offers to drive her and her sister home.  When Lyons and Phyllis reach the Chaundry estate — literally an estate at this point — Phyllis sees that her husband is not home and we see that she and Lyons are having an affair.  Lyons quickly tells Phyllis that he killed her husband; wow, he is gallant!  He insinuates incorrectly that her asking her husband to pick her up makes her an accessory.  Kind of a goofus thing to do, really.

The police show up and Phyllis makes a good show of feigning distress over her husband’s death. However, she does suspiciously seem a little more concerned when she learns that the crocodile case has gone missing.

After the murder is officially ruled a murder, Lyons wisely keeps his distance from Phyllis; actually if she had any sense, it would be the other way around.  Phyllis is upset that they aren’t going out and that he hasn’t called.  She drags her sister to a restaurant where it is likely they will bump into Lyons.

Patricia Hitchcock is cast as the sister, once again in her standard “homely girl” niche. Note the picture below where she is deliberately framed between two attractive specimens of greater stature.  I wish I had something clever to say about nepotism; or anything else.

Sending her sister off to their table, she begins complaining to Lyons again.  He finally convinces her to take a trip and not to write him.  She is still fixated on the dressing-case, even having her sister write a letter to the police chiding them for their failure to crack the crocodile case; or the crocodile case case.

Later, after they are married, she takes the problem to Scotland Yard. The local police find the case, though, and determine that the case was stolen by an employee of Lyons. Through a clever twist, Lyons implicates himself.

Great story and performances.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Only Patricia Hitchcock is hanging in there.
• Hulu, which charges me by forcing commercials into my eyeballs, deemed episode 33 to be unstreamable for some reason.  Why can’t I have a problem like that with Ray Bradbury Theater?
• 30 seconds of commercials . . . Hitchcock’s introduction . . . another 130 seconds of commercials.  You Tube is brilliant in making their commercials skippable after a few seconds.  I actually see the products there; on Hulu, I just go to another window and do some surfing.
• Hulu sucks.

Things get off to a pretty fishy start as old man Jasper P. Smith walks into a police station; fishy because there is no Jasper P. Smith in the credits.  Mr.  Smith has come to explain to the police how their investigation of The Stocking Murders has gone awry.  This will go well because if there is anything the police love more than people who know their rights, it is people telling them how to do their jobs ^[1].

He believes the 3rd so-called Stocking Murder is merely a copycat.  Which is a sound theory — I would expect the Stocking Murderer to stop at a pair; or at least a multiple of two.  So maybe there is an odd number of murders to come.  The detective assures him that “it just so happens that the Stocking Murders are sewn up tight.”  Ha!  Good one!

But even more importantly to the detective, the 3rd murder took place in a different precinct.  He sends the alleged Jasper to see Lt. King at the 51st precinct.  Smith goes to the 51st and introduces himself as Cyrus Morgan — I knew it!  Morgan tells Lt. King his take on the case.

“Three girls, all very young, all living in walk-up apartments.”  And all three were super-models (although that is an assumption on my part).  “Three weeks ago, the first girl was found by the cleaning woman in her pajamas.” Although how she got in the cleaning woman’s pajamas, he doesn’t know. She was strangled with the titular stockings and had an “A” scrawled on her forehead with lipstick.  As was the 2nd girl, as was the third.

Smith/Morgan suggests that once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action.  ^[2]  After seeing the pattern of the first two murders, a killer would count on the police to assume the third was the same killer.  The lieutenant repeatedly tells the old man not to waste his time as he is 30 and will be retiring with a lifetime pension shortly.

After being ejected from the police station, Smith / Morgan goes to the newspaper.  He is informed that there are no reporters in the building.  They are all off-duty and hanging at Ace’s Bar & Grill; this still being the era when journalists wrapped their lips around a bottle of hooch rather than a politician’s ass.

He finds Mr. Beekman of The Chronicle.  Smith/Morgan introduces himself as Ralph Reid, being the first person in history to change their to Ralph. Beekman introduces a dame at the bar who gives her name as Slats.  Smith / Morgan / Reid gets flustered at the woman (and the 2 sherries in his tea-totaling system) and bails from the bar.

He next tries a church, which apparently investigated murders in the 1950’s (child abuse, not so much).  He gives his name this time as Herbert Johnson.  He tells his theory to the priest.  The priest also dismisses him; he is an old man, after all.

A jarringly cinematic shot in a visually blah episode. Not least of which, because the scene is set at night.

Smith / Morgan / Reid / Johnson goes home to his wife.  There is a twist, but not the one I had been dreading for the previous 20 minutes; that’s the good news. The bad news is that the twist used is inadequate in two ways.  First, while it is certainly unexpected, it has absolutely zero foreshadowing.  Second, it is not even clear what happened.

Mrs. Johnson washes her hands and reaches for a towel.  The actual washing goes on a couple of beats too long, and is dwelt upon like it should have some significance. She then goes to get the towel with hands that are deliberately held as gnarled or arthritic even though she had no trouble lathering up.  She opens a drawer and removes a towel revealing lipstick and stockings hidden beneath.

Herbert says he can’t go back and tell the truth now, “no one would believe that a mother could do such a thing.”  Well, maybe if he had mentioned the mother angle to anyone.  The camera pans up to Mrs. Johnson sporting a big smile.

So, Johnson is right that the 3rd murder was a copycat.  But was it done by the girl’s mother or by the grinning Mrs. Johnson?  There is always the possibility that I am dumb as a post (or this post), but I really had to work through this to figure out what happened. Ultimately, it was a good twist, just maybe needed to be set up a little better.

UPDATE: I rewatched the episode in 2018, and reread this post.  Holy crap was I totally wrong on some things.  For the real story, as always, go to barebones ezine.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Actually, this blog is pro-police.  This is just an example of how easy it is to take cheap shots.
• ^[2] Actually, looking at this 3 years later, he suggested no such thing.
• AHP Deathwatch: Jackie Loughery and James Westmoreland are still with us.
• Jackie Loughery (the awesomely-named Slats) was not only Miss USA in 1952, she was married to Jack Webb.
• Hulu sucks.