Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The End of Indian Summer (S2E22)

ahindiansummer01We learn 3 things from this first frame:  1) The episode is about the scarily named Triumphant Insurance Company.  2) Its symbol is a sack of money — more likely theirs than the beneficiaries.  3) That phone is juuuust about to fall off the desk.  None of this matters as the insurance company does not turn out to be the bad guy, and the phone does not fall.

Misdirection or mis-direction?

Joe Rogers is in a little hot water for selling a $50,000 life insurance policy to Ms. Gillespie who has already buried 2 husbands with similar policies in the past  years.  His boss orders him to check up on Ms. Gillespie and see if she seems like a killer or just really unlucky.

Rogers, with his wife as camouflage, goes to a realtor’s office and asks about the ol’ Gillespie house.  He says it is not on the market, but that she loves showing it off to complete strangers.  Sure enough, she does give him the grand tour.

She talks about her two dead husbands until she surprises Rogers by introducing a visitor as her new fiancee.  Back at the hotel, Rogers gets a telegram telling him that Ms. Gillespie has taken out another $50,000 policy on her new fella.

Concerned that the old man is walking into a buzz-saw, he rushes to the ol’ Gillespie place to warn him.  Gillespie and her fiancee have already left to be married and go on their honeymoon.  Another man who Rogers has seen around town arrives at the house.

Finally, the two men talk.  Turns out the fiancee has buried three wives, and the other man is an investigator for another insurance company.  So it is just a waiting game to see which one kills the other first.

Not much going on here, no interesting visuals, no salacious subtitles.  Just an OK placeholder episode.  Actually the first frame was the most interesting of the episode.  That phone bugged me the whole episode.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch: Only Mickey Kuhn (the Bellhop) is still hanging in there.  He is one of the few survivors from Gone with the Wind.  He increased his odds by wisely being only 7 when it was filmed.

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