Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Deadly (S3E11)

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ahpdeadly01This takes place back in the old days when all women were housewives.   And they go to the train station to pick up their hat-wearing husbands after their train commute from the city.

On the way home, Margot tells her husband they have a leak in the water heater in the basement.  He says he will take a look at it.  It was back when men did that too, rather than just calling a plumber.

Margot is cooking dinner when her husband comes up from the basement.  She asks if he got it fixed, and he says, “No, it’s too dark down there to see what’s wrong.  I guess you’ll have to call a plumber.”  So what he really needs isn’t a plumber, it’s an electrician. Or a flashlight.  I take it back — this guy is not the handiest of men.

He also tells her to get an estimate, “and if it’s more that $10, he can forget it.”  I got nothin’.  That’s just mind-boggling.

The next morning, the doorbell rings.  Just like June Cleaver, she already has her pearls on by 9:30 am.  She looks out the window and sees the truck for Mike Staley Plumbing & Heating.  She opens the door and somehow seems surprised that her visitor is the plumber . . . who she called . . . and whose truck she just saw.

ahpdeadly13He makes way too much small talk with Margot, all smiles and charm. He is a little too familiar, guessing her husband’s salary and calling a neighbor by her first name.  After a few minutes in the basement, he tells Margot that he has to go upstairs to shut off the water in the bathroom to equalize the pressure, “that’s the trouble with the Stetson Valve, otherwise, they’re very good.”  I have a feeling he might just as well said he needed to get a Langstrom 7″ Gangly Wrench and Margot and I would both have been just as clueless.

She finds him admiring some artwork in the bedroom over the bed.  He compliments her taste on furniture, bedspreads, everything.  She is creeped out by this guy.  He picks up her nightie off a chair and compliments that too.

He comes back downstairs and after admiring the kitchen and house, he gives her an estimate of $500.  Extrapolating from the estimated $10 plumber’s bill, that would be $12 million in today’s dollars.  He explains that the exorbitant estimate is for him to keep his trap shut.  If people heard him talking about her bedroom, the artwork over the bed, the fancy bedspread, the pink negligee, they might get the wrong idea.

He also points out that his truck has been outside her house for two hours just to give an estimate for a leaky valve — what must the neighbors think?  That he’s getting paid by the hour, for one thing.

When he returns for the money, Margot has assembled all the housewives of whatever county this is.  He has blackmailed all of them and now they want their revenge.  He has spent all their money, so they start lining up jobs he can do to work off the debt, or they will call the police.  He whines, “but that’s blackm . . . .”.

Luckily for him, he is a pretty good looking guy, so some of these dames might ask him to lay some pipe.  Another corpse-less episode, but a fun story with good performances.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Coupla live ones.
  • Title Analysis:  The Deadly?  Hunh?  There are no deaths or even any threats of violence.

Night Gallery – Deliveries in the Rear (S2E19)

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ngdeliveries06On a very foggy night, we see a horse-drawn wagon go to the medical college with a delivery, where they take it in the rear.

Inside, Dr. Fletcher is teaching a surgical class using a cadaver.   He spots his student Mr. Tuttle getting a little pale looking at the cadaver.  Fletcher points out that the cadaver has been cut open and sewn back together many times here to save lives.  This additional information does nothing to settle Tuttle, who faints.  This reaction to routine surgical procedures is where urologists come from.

He gets a message that there is a new delivery in the titular rear.  He can tell that the body has been dead three weeks and not passed through a mortician’s hands.  He tells the men to go back and bury it where they found it.  The next corpse is much fresher — just a couple of hours dead.  He is not so uppity about the provenance on this piece of meat, so he gives them $50.

At his fiance Barbara’s house, her father questions where Fletcher is getting his cadavers.  Fletcher responds with a Clintonian dodge that he needs these bodies to teach young surgeons who will save many lives in their career.  He draws a pretty fine line between the grave-robbers and actually robbing the graves himself.  Besides, he claims, the bodies are always bums.  Fletcher says he puts them to work and give them a purpose.  They are a net benefit to society for the first time in their . . . er, life.

Going into the college the next day, he is accosted by an old woman who says he has her husband Charlie in there.  His day gets no  better when he sees the headmaster Dr. Shockman.  He asks for some assurance that Fletcher is not using grave-robbers.

Fletcher dodges the question, saying that he doesn’t ask questions.  The old lady talked to Shockman also, and the headmaster says the police will be called if Charlie’s body is found in the college.

ngdeliveries12Fletcher places a special order for a dead female from his procurers to be sure Shockman can find no male cadavers on the premises.  It is too cold to dig,so his thugs kill a woman to fill the order.  Hmmmm, special order, short notice, must be female, cold weather . . . $100 for this one; which Fletch forks over.

He lectures the class that the questioning of where the cadavers come from is misplaced.  No individual life is of consequence if it contributes to the saving of many lives.

He changes his tune; more of a scream than a tune, really, as he uncloaks today’s specimen and it is his fiance.

ngdeliveries15A nice piece, well cast and directed.  I just felt like there was something missing to link his fiance to the grave-robbers.  Maybe if she had just mentioned talking a walk in a dangerous part of town when Fletcher was visiting.  As it is, we are left to wonder, did these thugs just break into her house and snatch her?  And why her specifically?

 

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Marjorie Bennett (3), Peter Brocco (2,) Ian Wolfe (1), Walter Burke (1).

The Corpse on the Grating – Hugh B. Cave

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pulpgrating01Last story of the Pulp Fiction Megapack.  Number XXV of XXV.

Dale and the mysterious M.S. have been summoned to the home of Professor Daimler.  He tells them of his efforts and failure at bringing a dead body back to life.

I assume Daimler will return because that scene was a big fat nothing.  Returning from the Professor’s home, they pass a large dark warehouse, made more frightening by the corpse clinging to the iron door.  He appears to have died of horror.  M.S. fancies himself a reader of dead minds.  He divines that there is something terrible about Room 4167 in the warehouse.  When Dale scoffs, M.S. offers him £100 if he will spend the night in that room — a trope we’ve seen before.

That night, Dale enters the building with M.S.’s assistance and climbs the stairs in search of room 4167.  Once in the dark 4167, he fortuitously finds a flashlight.  He does end up seeing something that horrifies him, and M.S. has an explanation.

Really, though, it is so uninteresting that it deserves to be at the ass-end of a $.99 anthology of 25 stories.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930.  Entire issue available here, but why would ya?
  • Also that month: Pluto discovered.

Tales From the Crypt – Spoiled (S3E13)

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tftcspoiled06The sexy Fuchsia Monroe is trying to get some attention from her husband / business partner Evian.  When he is more interested in closing a deal, she grabs one of the dudes in the office and begins seducing him with a Hillaryesque “When I see something I want, I take it. Rules aren’t for me.”

The camera pulls back to reveal this is a soap opera being watched by two housewives folding laundry — Janet and Louise.  Janet thinks they should be more aggressive and take-charge in their relationships.

When Dr. Leon gets home, he gives Janet a quick kiss then goes down to his basement lab.  He feels that his new anesthetic might have saved the life of a patient he lost today, so might want to check Wikipedia for what anesthesia actually does.

tftcspoiled07When the TV goes out during a crucial moment in her soap opera, Janet calls the cable company.  They send out their studly installer “Abel, with the cable.”  After some sexual innuendo, he installs her cable.  Before they can really get down to it, he is called away on one of them cable emergencies you always hear about.

A few days later, Leon catches them making out and tries out his new long lasting anesthetic on them.  Bottom line, he does a head transplant.

Fine story, some great casting, and appropriate directorial tone for the series for a change. But for some reason I just couldn’t get into it.  I blame my self.  This is a good episode even if I’m not appreciating it right now.

tftcspoiled08If nothing else it features the beautiful Faye Grant.  She was probably best known for fighting the reptiles as Dr. Julia Grant in the original V.  Now she is probably best known for being married to the reptilian Stephen Collins.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  I can’t even guess how it connects to the story.
  • This is Connie Johnson’s only writing credit.  Luckily, they teamed her up with veteran Doug Ronning who has two writing credits, both on TFTC.
  • Strange how people are popping up in twos:  Carol Lynley, Harry Guardino, and now Alan Rachins.