Lloyd Ashley (Leslie Nielsen) is on the witness stand being asked if he hired a private detective to snoop on his wife.  He believes his wife was having an affair with his investment adviser.

He is also asked if he went to the adviser’s house and confronted him with a .32 caliber pistol.  Ashley does not deny any of this, but claims he just meant to frighten him. Unfortunately, the man lunged at Ashley, he dropped the gun, and it discharged when it hit the floor.  The next witness is a ballistics expert who testifies that a gun dropped on the floor would not discharge.

During a recess, Ashley offers his attorney, Mark Robeson, half his net worth if he can get him off by any means.  That would amount to to the titular $2,000,000.  Robeson wisely asks for the offer to be put in writing.

Back in his office, Robeson loads a pistol and slams it down on his desk to see if it will go off.  It does not, leaving him to earn his $2,000,000 fee by shooting himself in the arm.  Now he can get the ballistics expert back on the stand and use himself as an example of how slamming a pistol down can make it go off.

He further makes his case by giving the expert the loaded pistol and asking him to slam it to the ground.  When the expert refuses, the case is won.  If the gun will fire, you must . . . If the gun will discharge, you must . . . if the gun will go off, you must . . . . oh hell, just acquit already.

Back at Robeson’s office, he and Robeson toast the acquittal.  For some reason that I can’t figure out, Robeson has blank checks on Ashley’s account handy in his desk.  The man he shot was his investment adviser, Robeson is just his lawyer.  Whatever, Ashley happily signs a $2,000,000 check.

He then takes Robeson’s pistol out of his desk drawer and accuses him of also having an affair with his wife — Christ, what a tramp.

The private investigator who uncovered the first affair also discovered Ashley’s wife having an affair with Robeson.  BANG.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
• 22 years before Leslie Nielsen starting going for laughs in Airplane!.
• The ballistics expert also played the father of Dennis the Menace.  I must be getting old — the moms in these old series are starting to look pretty good to me.
• Hulu sucks.

Harry and Mrs. Adams are cruising down the highway when they close in a police car creeping along at 48. Hey, that doesn’t mean a MAXIMUM of 50, you idiots!  Oh, wait.  Rather than move at this glacial pace for 10 miles, Harry rockets past them at 57 MPH.

After a few seconds, the police car turns on the siren and pulls close behind them.  To be fair, Adams should have slowed and pulled over even if he didn’t think the siren tolled for thee.  The police car cuts them off, forcing the Adams family truckster onto some rocks.

I’m not sure Walter Matthau pulled off being a believable redneck southern sheriff, but he did create an awesome character.  He had the drawl, what we now call passive-aggressive language, the arrogance of power, small gestures, and an attitude guaranteed to infuriate anyone dealing with him.  Which is just playing into his hands.

Adams mouths off and Matthau orders him to follow the police car back to town.  Unfortunately, the Adams car is stuck on the rocks.  What luck, a tow truck shows up almost like this was planned.

Of course, the tow-truck driver doubles as a mechanic and both of them ream Adams on their services.  Then they are taken to the Justice of the Peace who doubles as the judge, and they both ream Adams on the fines and court costs.

However, in the end, justice is done.  I think the Justice of the Peace is also done; and his little sheriff too.

This was awesome, kind of a greatest hits package on both sides of the screen.  Although not directed by Hitchcock, it contains two of his recurring themes: fear of the police, and a man falsely accused.  Mixed with my own respect for the police but general disgust and distrust of the government, this created a science project Mt. Vesuvius for me.

At first I thought the beginning had been a cheat, but in reviewing it they were pretty slick on the dialogue. Kudos for not blatantly trying to trick the audience in the pre-VOD days. Also, at 39 episodes a year, how were there ever any reruns?

I rate this one 100 MPH.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  The tow-truck driver is still with us.
• Title Analysis: AHP doesn’t usually go in for the clever titles.  Well played on this one, however.
• The IMDb Plot Summary refers to Matthau and also the entire town as corrupt rednecks.  Guess that’s still OK.
• Hulu sucks.

The opening shot is of a speeding train and it isn’t going into a tunnel, so we know Alfred Hitchcock did not direct this episode.

Uber-obnoxious kid Johnny Templeton is stalking the hallways of the train, opening doors where hot college girls could be having naked pillow fights, and just generally being a nuisance.  And just how bloody wide is this train that not only has a hallway, but turns in it?

Johnny and his parents Mary (hey, it’s TV’s Cloris Leachman!) and Larry (hey, it’s that guy who played Larry once on AHP!) ^[1] make their way to the club car which is staffed by Scatman Crothers — with hair!  They are just in time to hear on the radio that a patient has escaped from the state mental hospital.  I think even after 30 seconds, everyone watching this is hoping he goes after the kid.

Turns out that Johnny has been suspended from school so maybe he has issues.  One thing he definitely has is a cool toy pistol that shoots peanuts that I would have loved as a kid, and maybe even now.  He just continues with one antic after another (can antic be singular?).  He is yapping, mixing up drinking glasses, yapping, stealing Mary’s goofy dead-fox wrap, yapping and pouring milk into an ashtray.  Also, running his yap.

Dad sends him back to their room, but before he leaves, another man named Kilmer (Chill Wills) enters the club car.  He doesn’t like drinking alone and asks if he can join the Templetons.  Like any family with a small child, they welcome the booze-hound to join them.  He just boarded the train back where that mental patient escaped.  Kilmer claims to have been a cowboy for 20 years. Suddenly the train stops.

The conductor tells Mary that the generator is on the fritz, this being one of them generator trains what replaced diesel and steam.  Could Kilmer be the mental patient?  When he asks the bartender to put a head on his scotch, it makes me wonder.

Larry bribes his son with a shiny silver dollar that he can’t keep his yap shut for ten minutes while Kilmer tells a story.  Johnny is mighty tempted as he sees fingers clawing at the glass behind his mother.

Despite some lapses, Johnny’s indulgent father gives him the dollar. After being warned by Kilmer to keep the dollar in a safe place, Johnny stows it in between his belt and his pants where it falls down almost immediately.  Scatman puts his foot on the dollar and bogarts it after the Templetons leave.

Well, I am utterly baffled by what the story is supposed to be here.  There is a great suspenseful set-piece to be had with the scenario we are given, but this just makes no sense.  The escaped mental patient is clawing at the window, but so what?  It’s not like he’s a man on the wing of a plane.  The train is stopped, for crying out loud — just go to the steps in between the cars!  What are you, mentally cha . . . oh, yeah.

And why did they feel the need to end the episode by having the black steward stealing from the white kid?  The race thing doesn’t bother me as much as how much it is a total non-sequitur.  Focus, people!

Post-Post:

• ^[1] In fairness, Biff McGuire had a great career.
• AHP Deathwatch:  Biff McGuire and Cloris Leachman are still alive, sadly outliving their obnoxious TV son by 7 years so far.

My first inclination was to post a JPG of the old Monopoly Free Parking tile and close up shop for the day.  I always knew I’d get to an episode of something that was so mind-numbing that I just couldn’t go on — I just thought it would part of Ray Bradbury Theater.

Flipping around the whopping — if you were lucky — TWO other channels the Sunday night this aired, you could have turned to the Dinah Shore show on NBC, or The All-American Football Game of the Week on ABC.  Strangely, the football game only had a 30 minute time slot; even at that, it must have been about 20 minutes of guys standing around.  Most worthless game ever.  But still more interesting that this CBS AHP POS.

Been unseasonably warm this year, hasn’t it . . . oh, hell I might as well get on with it.

Writer Adam Longsworth and director Nofirstname Robinson are auditioning actors for their new play.  They are starting starting to wonder if they will ever find the right actor for the 2nd lead.  Their anxiety is understandable as the old guy on-stage is the 1950’s version of Bill Paxton.

They retire to their gentleman’s club for a drink and to meet with their friend Koslow to discuss casting alternatives.  As they dismiss actor after actor, Colin Bragner approaches them.  He is a bit of a has-been, but was well regarded back in the day. He invites Longsworth and his wife to dinner, but Longsworth declines.

The two big-shots are dismissive of Bragner because of his age — but they should be dismissive because he is a bore.  And they should know because these are two most brutally boring characters I’ve encountered in almost 500 posts.  Sadly, their performances are not elevated by the dreary and infrequent score and leaden direction.  This is a rock.  An island.

When Longsworth arrives home, he finds that Bragner has tricked his wife into accepting his invitation to dinner.  He mansplains to his wife that it is just a ruse for Bragner to get cast in his new play.  He says that Bragner’s style is passe, that modern audiences wouldn’t accept him.  Longsworth warns his wife that Bragner’s place is probably filled with “scrapbooks, faded reviews and brass spittoons.”  Wait, what?

His wife is a little more sympathetic and reminds her husband how they were broke themselves just three years ago.  So they go.

Bragner pours the wine and gives an interminable toast which is merely a hint of the soul-crushing monologue to come.  He assures the Longsworths that he did not invite them just to weasel his way into the new play.  He invited them to announce his retirement.

He picks up the titular white frock and begins telling them the story of Lila Gordon.  He and another actor named Terry had the hots for her.  Bragner proposed, but she rejected him, possibly because he was costumed like Ming the Merciless at the time.  He told Terry that it is him that Lila wants, so Terry went to Lila to propose.  If that isn’t bad enough, the lucky son-of-a-bitch inherited millions of dollars and bought a New York penthouse.  Before Terry got a chance to marry Lila, he met a younger babe named Annabelle and married her.  Terry ended up being killed in a mugging, but he and Annabelle produced a daughter named Jeanie.  Lila took an interest in Terry & Annabelle’s daughter.

When Jeanie was 10 years old, Lila summoned Bragner and he came so quickly he still had the operatic clown tears on his face.  Lila asked him to take a dress to Annabelle.  Jeanie is a spoiled brat and throws it on the floor.  When he went back to Lila, she was dead.

Bragner’s maid enters and says the dress belongs to her niece.  The Longsworths realize this has been one long audition.

With the exception of Julie Adams, this was the most boring group of people I have ever seen.

Post-Post:

• Julie Adams was in Creature from the Black Lagoon and Night Gallery.  She also showed up almost 50 years later in an episode of Lost.

Sometimes I kind of feel that way about Alfred Hitchcock Presents — a guy commits a murder and accidentally incriminates himself.  The end.  Episode S3E38, for example.

It is set in 1916, but could be anytime; it is set in England, but could be anywhere; the lead actor is an American, but could have been any nationality; the thief / killer was a lawyer . . . actually, that seems about right.

Solicitor Henry Daw (Hume Cronyn) who is also the Mayor-elect, gets a visit from Miss Wilkinson whom he has not seen in 9 years.  Miss Wilkinson tells Daw’s sister that she must be proud that he was just elected Mayor.  She says she is a little worried about taking on the role of Mayoress.  That’s another trend in AHP — men who are freakishly close to their sister.

Miss W tells Daw that she wishes to withdraw her investments from his management. She has an opportunity to double her money in 6 months due to a business proposition from a Nigerien Prince.  No wait, it’s her brother — it’s AHP, of course his sister is going to be his partner.  Business partner.

Sadly, Daw has spent Miss W’s investment on 18 year old hookers, 20 year old scotch, and wasted the rest (coincidentally, that joke is also from 1916).

The next time we see Daw, he is digging one of those perfect graves that any slob seems to be able to dig on TV.  To AHP’s credit, at least he does break a sweat.  That might be because he dug it while wearing a vest and necktie.  Also the back-breaking digging.

That night, he strangles Miss W, which we witness as shadows on the wall.  He throws her over his shoulder like Jessica Tandy and takes her to the waiting grave.  Daw’s sister is awakened by him going down the stairs, but there is no indication that she witnesses any shenanigans.  Maybe she was just jealous.

After he places Miss W in the grave (off-camera), we see that he has covered her with an exposed cement slab that doesn’t look at all out-of-place is this marshy area alongside the river.  As he is walking away, he seems to realize that he has forgotten something.  He puts a few shovel-fulls of dirt in a bucket, walks to the river, and dumps the dirt in the water.  To be honest, it took me a while to realize we just saw the first iteration of him getting rid of the dirt that Miss W’s body displaced.

To create the illusion that Miss W left on her own, Daw dresses up like a widowed Mulsim Invisible Woman going to work as a beekeeper near a Haz-Mat Facility in the Antarctic with fabric covering every inch of his body, including a scarf around his face. He then takes a carriage to the train station and heads toward Miss W’s home.

During the dedication of a war memorial, a body is spotted floating down the river.  The police believe it could be Miss W and call Daw to identify the body.  Through a merry mix-up, Daw believes he has been caught in a lie and confesses to the murder — only to find that if he had kept his yap shut for 2 more minutes he would have gotten away with it.

Despite feeling a little familiar, another fine outing.  Hume Cronyn, especially, was very good, but then he was a highly regarded actor until he was 112 ^[1].  I also enjoyed the locations used.  When AHP starts with a title card establishing a non-US location, I always start out with a little dread, but this worked out nicely with great interiors and exteriors.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] I see upon further research, he was only 91 when he died.
• AHP Deathwatch:  David Frankham (“Holsom”) is still alive.  I’m not sure who his character was, and I’m not going back.
• Title Analysis: Not exactly impromptu.  The murder was planned at least  several hours in advance.  Daw did the all-important prep-work of site-location, digging the hole, creating an intricate alibi, and procuring boots, a shovel and a bucket.
• Words ending in U — more than you would think.