Roald Dahl’s intros don’t usually do much for me or the story.  However, this time it casts a spell over the whole episode.  He tells of the time as a young man that he looked out the window and saw a 6-foot black mamba snake behind the gardener — or as we call them today, the Mexican. er, landscaper.  He shouted to the man to turn around, but the hombre is bitten and DIES!  Hitchcock can deliver his droll intros about murder 1,000 times, but this short first-person anecdote stays with you throughout the episode.  Kudos!

And if that intro did not sufficiently make your skin crawl, the sitar music should do the trick.  I think that’s why George Harrison was perpetually haggard ^[1] — nausea at all that sitar music.

Harry Pope is a little haggard himself as he has been on the wagon for three weeks.  He is also feeling pressure from his boss.  Harry works in India training citizens there to speak English.  His boss in London orders him to hand over the training classes to Bengali teachers because of reports that some Indian immigrant’s kid in Podunk, KY came in 2nd in the Spelling Bee.

Harry sees this as an opportunity to get back to England so he can enjoy that delicious English cuisine.  And if you’re living in a place where the cuisine makes English food seem tasty by comparison, by God, I doff my chapeau to you sir.

He climbs into his bed which is enclosed in mosquito netting.  Sadly, it does nothing to keep out snakes.  As he is reading ^[3], we see a krait ^[2] slither into his bedroom.  He feels a warmth down below and sees the sheets begin to rise, and it’s not because his bedtime reading material is like mine.  He lifts the sheet and sees the snake sitting on his chest.  He is immobile and sweating profusely.  Harry, not the snake.

Hours later, for some reason, his British pal Timber brings a blonde dame back to Harry’s house.  In a low voice, Harry calls him into the bedroom.  He tells Timber and the girl that there is a krait on his stomach, under the sheet.  He implores his friend to call for help, and maybe another girl.  Timber calls Doctor Kunzru — hey there’s an actual Indian in India — that the woman knows.

The doctor has an antidote that might work, but they want a fallback position.  They decide to sprinkle some chloroform on the sheets to put the snake to sleep which sounds ridiculous, but I’m no Indian.  All the while, Harry is motionless and glistening.

The woman is afraid the doctor will recognize her even without her feet in stirrups and blab that she is cheating on her husband.  She sneaks out and takes the doctor’s car, which I guess was her only purpose in the episode.  BTW, what better way to not draw attention to yourself than to steal a dude’s car.

Timber and the doctor slowly pull back the sheets and they all see the snake is gone.  Timber somehow knows where the woman is going so he drives the doctor to get his car.

Harry goes to the kitchen, rather than Europe, which would have been my move.  He takes a bottle of Stoly out of the well-stocked liquor cabinet which all recovering alkies keep close by.  He reaches for a glass and the snake strikes, biting him and coiling around his arm.  He dies on the spot — the spot made by his own pool of urine, I imagine.

So we have a great synergistic intro and a great premise, but no real value is added beyond the suspense that is fundamentally baked into the premise.  There is no revenge, no come-uppance, no karma, no irony . . . he just gets bit in the kitchen instead of the bedroom.  Harry was not a bad guy, so what is the point?  The woman was cheating on her husband, maybe something could have been done with that.  Of course, it would be sexist not to point out that Timber was also guilty of adultery.  The doctor says to Timber in the car that he is not a “failed MD”.  What is that about?

Still, the premise was so great that I have to give it a thumbs-up!

Other Stuff:

• [1]  As observed by Norm McDonald.
• [2]  Pronounced CRITE.  Who knew?
• [3]  Late Call by Angus Wilson is displayed so prominently that it must be meaningful, but dang if I can figure out why.
• I see that this is not the first adaptation.  Like Post Mortem few weeks ago, I somehow skipped the AHP version.  Cripes, it’s starting to look like I put no thought at all into this thing.  So that will be the next AHP entry.
• Proximity Alert:  Anthony Steel appeared in Galloping Foxley just 2 episodes ago.  Give someone else a chance!
• Kudos to Andrew Ray (Harry) who appeared to do some real snake-handling at the end.  Again, not like me with my bedtime reading material.