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Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Hands of Mr. Ottermole (S2E32)

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ahpottermole01This episode, set in 1919 London, seems to have been the beneficiary of some available sets which make it more interesting than the story itself.

In foggy London town, we follow a business-man who has just gotten off the train.  Walking through the station, he stops at a newsstand and picks up a paper, declines to buy a flower offered from a tray by an old woman, and turns to walk down a foggy tunnel which opens onto a foggy street.  Conveniently, he lives the second door down.  He waves to an acquaintance whistling Greensleeves as he enters.  His journey is a single shot that lasts over a minute with just one edit at the flower lady.

ahpottermole03He arrives home and seems pretty excited that his wife is making kippers.  There is a knock at the door, and we shift to the visitor’s POV.  The man invites him in for dinner, but we see hands reach out and strangle him.

The man’s nephew stops by while the police are at the crime scene.  A pushy reported barges in, but is turned away as the ambulance arrives.  Lucky Officer Otterpoole was on the job.

The newspaper chides the cops when the crime is not solved after 4 days

ahpottermole02Next, the flower lady is strangled by man she knows whistling Greensleeves.

Hanging out at the police station, the reporter and a cop agree that the man must be a foreigner, like the heavily accented Ottermole; who drinks tea, like Ottermole is doing at that very second; is smiling at the police’s inability to catch the murderer, like Ottermole.  And have two hands — like Ottermole!!!

Next a cop is found dead, so shit gets real.

In the pub, the reporter talks about how when something is right before our eyes, we don’t stop to ask how it got there — “like that ham sandwich.”  Is this a reference to Ottermole aka the police aka pigs?  OED has references of cops as pigs as far back as 1811.

The reporter figures it out and brilliantly confronts Office Ottermole on a lonely foggy street.  Ottermole says he doesn’t know why he killed the people.  His hands seem to have a mind of their own.  He strangles the reporter before being grabbed from behind.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Only Theodore Bikel is still with us.
  • The title just rubs your face in the fact that it is a cheat.  But then “The Hands of Officer Ottermole” would have taken some of the suspense out of the story.
  • A kipper is also known as a red herring.
  • Ellery Queen wrote of Thomas Burke’s original 1941 story, “No finer crime story has ever been written, period.”
  • The tune to Greensleeves is the same as the Christmas carol, What Child is This.

The Dogs of Purgatory – Hugh Pendexter

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pulpmegadogsof0125 stories for $.99; they must be good.

Dix is in a bad situation, and not just because of his name.  He has wandered off from his camp, and thanks to overcast skies and the loss of his compass, he was been wandering for 3 days.

Having not eaten in 12 hours, Dix questions his senses when he sees a pack of dogs running toward him.  With no where to take shelter, they are upon him in no time behaving fiercely, but restrained by muzzles.

They are followed by a dwarf, Cumber and a graceful young woman, Florence.  The woman orders the dwarf to take the dogs back to the house, but it is clear he would have preferred to remove the muzzles and allowed them to go down on Dix.

Dix and Florence go back to the house where he meets her sickly uncle.  The dying man tells Dix that Cumber is not their servant but is keeping them prisoner there.  It seems like the dwarf would be pretty easy to overpower, even for the petite Florence. However her uncle is deathly ill, and she is not even aware that Cumber is actually master of the house.

pulpfiction01On the 4th night, Florence’s uncle “dropped into his last sleep.  Once Cumber understood his master had gone, he withdrew with his dogs to the farther side of the knoll” leaving Dix to dig the grave.  So clearly Cumber knows the old man is dead.

Then how to explain his later comment, “The master has gone to a fair country far to the north.”  OK, maybe a poetic way to say he croaked.  But then he continues, “Tomorrow I must be off to find him.”

Florence and Dix plan an elaborate and dangerous escape over ice and lakes being chased by the evil rifle-toting dwarf and vicious dogs.  However, Dix had ample opportunity in the past four days to dropkick the li’l bastard and have a leisurely return to civilization.

However, that would have denied the reader an action packed-chase through the icy wilds with Florence in a sled and Dix on ice skates.  I was never clear what propelled the sled, was Dix pulling it?

Pendexter was not the smoothest of wordsmiths.  As far as I can tell, at the end, one of the dogs grabs Cumber’s rifle in his jaws and shoots him, clearing the way for Flo & Dix to escape.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Complete Northwest Novels Magazine, June 1936.
  • Also published that month: Gone with the Wind.
  • 2nd story in the collection to feature an evil dwarf.

Night Gallery – Whispers (S3E13)

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ngwhispers03According to Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour, “Whisper” is among the best scripts Night Gallery ever produced.

Then who is to blame for the piece of shit as it aired?  Serling had long ago had his power in the series usurped.  Director Jeannot Szwarc?  Certainly not, he went on to direct Jaws 2, and Somewhere in Time.  Maybe the answer is on one of the pages hidden by Google Books.

Sally Field allows spirits to enter her body.

Dean Stockwell has a ridiculous afro.

There is a lot of talking directly to the camera.

I watched this episode twice, so I feel like I’ve done my part.  Really an awful experience.

ngwhispers02Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Dean Stockwell was in A Quality of Mercy where he played a Japanese Soldier.
  • This 3rd season episode oddly appears in the 1st season collection, but it is almost bad enough to put me off marching 4th into the 2nd season.

Needle (2010)

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needle02After the credits, an old an old man is assaulted by an unseen attacker who leaves a hole in his chest like he was shot by a cannon.

This unpleasantness passes quickly, then we cut to a college campus where it is quickly demonstrated that Australia’s production of Elle Macpherson was no fluke.  Just to further drive home the point, one of the girls is in a lesbian relationship with a French Exchange Student.  This is just the kind of craftsmanship that is sadly lacking in American movies today.

Ben is visited at his room by Mr. Joshua, a representative from his father’s estate.  He has brought Ben a box found in a storage unit.  Ben is ready to ready to eBay it, but understandably uses it first to entice some girls back to his room.

One of the group fatefully records their image with some sort of picture-taking device that does not have a phone in it, and actually is able to produce said image on paper — how retro!

needle04Ben’s ne’er-do-well brother Marcus shows up at the room.  Somehow this drifter has secured a gig with the police as a crime scene photographer.  He is generally a good guy throughout the film, but is immediately set up as unlikeable, and pulls that off perfectly.  I think it is the haircut.

Ben discovers the box has been stolen.  An unseen person begins cutting up the aforementioned photo, and inserts one of the gang’s headshot into the machine.  After adding some liquids, the machine produces a waxy doll that can be used for voodoo-like effects.  It also seems to wreak havoc on electrical systems.  The mystery person uses the doll to inflict numerous fatal cuts on the victim.

needle17The gang is pretty quick to draw a connection between the missing box and their dead friend.  Another of the gang has their picture inserted, and the box again works its magic.  It is more grizzly this time as not only is the victim sliced by an invisible knife, he has limbs lacked off.

The mystery figure is revealed, the motive is disclosed, and there is a proper comeuppance.

Overall, a nice little film with mostly likeable characters, a few shocks, and good pacing.

Post-Post:

  • Mr. Joshua is a pretty unusual name not to be a callback to Gary Busey in the first Lethal Weapon, but there seems to be no connection.
  • Ben’s professor was Jane Badler from V. The good one.