The woman was bent far forward . . .
Now that’s how you start a story!
It regresses to the mean quickly as she is only leaning over the steering wheel with squinty eyes looking at the road ahead and checking the mirrors for the car following her. Her eyes get the opposite of squinty as they begin firing on her. One shot blows out a tire, and a parting shot thuds into the back of the seat beside the woman.
The brave drive-by missers speed away, leaving the woman fortuitously stranded by a gas station. She gives the mechanic her card and cabs her way back to Manhattan. They see from her card that she is Mrs. Dale Hanan [1] of the Park Avenue Dale Hanans. The mechanic recognizes her his the name. “She’s Hanan’s wife — the millionaire. Made his dough in oil” which is why his bread is so yummy. His partner says, “That’s swell. We can soak him plenty.”
Her cab stops at 63rd and Park Avenue. Hey, there’s the Regency — I’ve stayed there! She calls her husband and tells him what happened. An hour later, he is paying a visit to Mr. Druse. Hanan tells Druse that Jeffrey Crandall just tried to kill his wife. Hanan says his ex-wife Catherine has gone through about $115k of her inheritance gambling. She has further run up a debt of $68k.
Hanan says his wife still has a set of rubies named “Pigeon Blood” by the worst marketing department on earth. The plan was for Crandall to steal the rubies, Catherine to collect the insurance to pay him back, and Crandall to give her back the rubies. Which sounds great, although, I’m not sure why Crandall needed to be involved at all. Anyhoo, Crandall gave her back some phonies, doubling his take. She threatened to rat him out to the insurance company even if she had to go to jail. That’s when his boyz started shooting at her. Druse agrees to help out for the low, low sum of $35k. What the hell, that’s $650k in 2018 dollars!
Druse goes to her place and finds her drunk, with a dead man in her apartment. The dude tried to sneak up the fire escape so she brained him with a niblick. They leave the apartment. Druse asks how long she and Hanan have been divorced. Like every woman I talk to, she takes about 3 seconds to tell him she is married.
They go to Druse’s luxurious penthouse apartment. It is as fabulous as you would expect from a guy who takes $650k cases. It lacks an infinity pool, but has an infinity carpet — the living room is open to the dark city skyline outside, without even a railing.
Druse leaves Catherine and uses a phone downstairs to call Hanan. He tells Hanan his wife Catherine is dead — what a scamp! Then he goes to see Crandall and gives him the same story. Crandall turns out to be pretty honest as gangsters go. The rubies had already been switched out when he stole them.
Druse regroups with the Hanans back at his crib. Druse lays out the whole story and someone inevitably goes over the edge of that open-air living room. The story is pretty standard, but the image of that death is staying with me. That would be worth the price of admission in a movie.
And by “price of admission” I mean a month’s Netflix fee because God knows they haven’t earned their $7.99 in months.
Other Stuff:
- [1] I refuse to watch The Handmaid’s Tale because of the producers’ hysteria that it could become reality any day. On the other hand, the old convention of sticking Mrs. In front of the husband’s full name is about as close to Offred as you can get.
- Druse has a Filipino boy working for him at his pad. We know this because the phrase “Filipino boy” appears 13 times in 3 pages.
- Paul Cain was last heard from in One, Two, Three in this same collection. So either he is a great writer, or he has a lot of stuff in the public domain.
- First published in the November 1933 issue of Black Mask.
- Also that month: Duck Soup released.
Borden and his guide Brenegan come staggering out of the dense jungle into a slightly less dense area of the jungle. They are showing up 15 days late and without the 
When she is fully awake, she tells of the attack of the invisible creatures. She says, “Mr. Bordon, please don’t leave me.” [1] Brenegan gets the idea that the insects could be inside the cabin already and grabs his gun. That night they are awakened by scratching noises and one of the beasts really does make it into the cabin.
Well, wait a darn minute — when I dropped out of modelling school to take a job with a secret military outfit working in a cold-war bunker funded by the Pentagon covertly located 200 feet underground to move stuff with my mind, I didn’t expect this. Mr. Brown tries to convince Harry and Nicole that this Serbian is a really bad guy. The other two subjects, Roger and Louise, clearly did not get by on their looks. No disrespect, I just mean they were smart enough to see where this experiment was heading.
Well, well, well, the idealistic Nicole decides keeping her brother out of jail is worth the cold-blooded murder of a foreigner (and an American to be named later who Dougie will probably kill). The group assembles, and by executive order takes aim at some commie. They warm up by creating a breeze where he is dining al fresco, then shattering his tea-cup. Then they give him a heart-attack. And it must be a bad one because the actor hams it up like Fred Sanford or Ralph Kramden.
And then Outer Limits fools me. Nicole begs Harry to kill her. It is apparently her mind creating the entity and she doesn’t know how to stop it. Even Mr. Brown had said she had to be killed. As she begs Harry to turn the gun on her, the typical OL response would be for him to tell Nicole he loves her and let love vanquish the monster just as mere calmness had subdued it earlier.
And I assume this brain-trust also designed the equipment. While I appreciate that it is not just a bank of blinking lights, why would the gauges be 7 feet off the ground so you needed a step-ladder or, fortuitously, a mammoth to read them?
Dr. Griffen suggests maybe it misses its mammy. It could be Griffen’s own maternal instinct kicking in. She reveals to Keath that her husband and son were killed in an accident five years earlier, although that might just have been her way of saying she is available. Just to make the beast’s misery complete, they name him Toby.
In which Alfred Hitchcock Presents proves once again that it is just about incapable of turning out a bad episode. Ya got an motor-mouth kid, ya got an extended flashback, ya got a straight drama, ya don’t even get a murder. This feels like a very different type of episode, but they pull it off bigly.
His father comes walking by after his softball game at the park. It is clear that Mr. Kovacs is a hero to his son and respected by Clete. We also learn that Clete will be moving into the city the next day, The boys decide to go to the golf course to make some money by fishing golf balls out of the water hazards.
Iggy wants to tell the cops about Mr. Rose, but Clete is hesitant. He figures the man can go to the police himself, but Iggy knows the man would be too scared. Clete finally agrees — he’s moving tomorrow; what does he care? They go to the police station. When the cops hear Mr. Rose is involved, they are not interested. Iggy says he will tell everyone, including his father. Finally the desk sergeant tells another cop to bring in Mr. Rose for question, and Iggy’s father too. Iggy says to Clete, “Just wait til my pop gets here. He’ll show that cop, and Mr. Rose, too.”
As they are walking home, Iggy shows Clete that Mr. Rose gave him a $10 bill. Clete says that’s a lot of money and “you better give that to your old man or he’ll really jump on you.” Iggy, crushed by his father’s failure says, “You know what I’ll do if my father tries anything? I’ll tell Mr. Rose on him, that’s what! You’ll see!” Iggy repeats “You’ll see!” as he runs down the block past several brownstones while the camera rises high above the street — one of AHP’s best shots (picture at bottom).