Janice is an 17-year-old girl who wants to be older, able to drink, and move out of her aunt’s house.  Her boyfriend Stan is a pretty conserv-ative guy her own age.  They are at a local roadhouse, The Wooly Bear, but only able to drink lemonade because they are too young.

Stan wants to leave, but she wants to dance, and spins her way alone across the dance-floor.  At the end, she gets a call for a round of applause from tough guy Tex sitting at the bar.  Janice goes to him, and Stan fights for his woman by walking out — the ultimate passive resistance.  Tex gives her a cigarette because they are both cool.

This is the wild roadhouse Aunt Mae wants to keep her out of?

It takes about 2 minutes for Janice to ask Tex to take her out of this town and her humdrum life.  Tex knows trouble when he sees it and declines her offer.  Or maybe he is turned off by the huge fly that lands on her while they are talking (left shoulder, about 6:20 in).

The very forgiving sap Stan is waiting for her outside and walks her back to Aunt Mae’s house.  After an argument with her Aunt Mae, she goes back to the bar to see Tex.  A coppish friend of the family shoos her away and says he’ll check on her later at home, but when Tex leaves, he finds Janice waiting for him.

He walks her back to Aunt Mae’s house.  Really, the amount of walking in this episode would make my Fitbit explode.  They enter quietly with the lights off so as to not attract Aunt Mae’s attention.  Janice goes to get them some drinks and comes back with two milks.  WTH?

When they hear a police car pull up, Janice throws a glass of milk at Tex, rips her dress and runs outside screaming.  The cop naturally thinks Tex assaulted her.  Not only that, with the lights on, we can see Tex standing right beside Aunt Mae who has been pushed down the stairs and killed.  Doesn’t look good for Tex.

Janice makes up a story of Tex following her home, attacking her and killing Aunt Mae. Too bad for her, Stan strolls in and says he had stopped by the house while she was at the bar with Tex and saw Aunt Mae already dead.  A lot of guys might have called the police upon first finding the dead body.

A good story, but a so-so episode.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Carol Lynley (Janice) and Stephen Joyce (Stan) are still with us.
• Carol Lynley aged very well, looking much sexier in The Poseiden Adventure than here.
• A big point is made that Tex is much older than Janice, and the actor is 14 years older.  But even Stan is 11 years older than Janice, playing 18.  A little more effort in casting, please.
• Directed by Robert Altman.

Murderer Gerry Daniels is facing electrocution at midnight.  The chaplain, warden and an officer are there to prep him — expose the contact points for the juice, say a little prayer, offer him a last request. Unlike most such scenes, it is not just a last meal, but a last request that is granted.  The warden wisely adds “within reason” to head off any “3 more requests” tomfoolery.  Or hookers.

After protesting his innocence of this murder, Daniels requests a typewriter and some paper, pushing his luck with two requests.  He begins typing a letter to the editor of The Star Times News (24-hour old news printed on dead trees, for you youngsters).

He asks that when they print the story of his execution, they also print this letter.  He starts off opining that District Attorney Bernard Butler, who sent him to the chair, “is a fool” who has convicted the wrong man in his case, and blamed others for crimes that Daniels did commit.

In flashbacks as Daniels types, we see that he is quite a lady’s man.  He picks up a married woman drinking alone in a bar, and they go back to her place.  Just as they start swapping spit, her husband returns early from a business trip and belts her.  The husband then attacks Daniels, who shoots him.  Daniels then shoots the woman, and stages them to make it look like a murder-suicide.  In the letter, he admits shooting them both and mocks Butler for being so easily fooled.

At the bar, a waitress tells him that she saw him with the murdered woman the night she was killed. For $200, she will keep quiet.  So, he kills her too.  Again, he berates Butler for charging the waitress’s husband with her murder.  Her husband, he types, “was executed for a crime he did not commit, just as I will be executed for a crime I did not commit.”

Next he hooks up with a doctor’s wife.  His bookie tracks him down at her house.  She offers to pay his debt in order to never see him again.  When he goes to deliver the cash, the bookie is already dead.  Daniels is standing right there, however, so he is charged with the murder.  The doctor’s wife claims to have never met him.

In the letter he admits to killing three people, but says he is innocent of the crime which got him convicted. So the fool Bernard Butler is sending an innocent man to the chair.

He mails the letter, then gets a visit from the idiot Bernard Butler.  The doctor’s wife changed her mind and provided his alibi — he is a free man He screams to get the incriminating letter back, but it is too late.

Yeah, that Butler — what a maroon!

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  A couple of Daniels’ babes are hanging on.
• Another reason I watch the AHP intros, but not TFTC’s:

Maxie drops in on this dame Madge, see?  He tells her that Joe got out of the joint yesterday, but she’s already hip.

They had all been in on a robbery that got them $100,000.  Unfortunately, Joe was the only one who knew where the loot was.  Fearing — and justifiably — that Madge and Maxie would split the loot 50/50, he never revealed the hiding place.

They discuss whether Joe will even try to hook back up with them.  Madge does the math, “I’m not 22 anymore — I’m 32, and he’s got $100,000.”  That’s 2,000 20 year old hookers in 2015 dollars.  Nevertheless, she dolls herself up and Joe does ring her bell; well, is at the door.

Despite Joe having been in the slam for 10 years, and her apartment being lucky #7, she is not very accommodating.  She says she is going downstairs to get a pizza, then they can talk about where is is going to stay.  Just what a dude fresh out of prison wants to hear.

When she gets back, Maxie drops in pretending he had no idea Joe would be there.  He asks Joe where the money was stashed and he says it is about 100 miles out in the Mojave Desert.  Maxie takes Joe home to bunk with him that night.  WTF, Madge?

On the way to the desert, they stop at a store to buy mining supplies — picks, rope, a pistol — wait, what?  They then drive 100 miles out into the Mojave.  As soon as they unload the tools, Joe shoots Maxie and socks Madge in the kisser.

Joe climbs down an abandoned mine and finds the loot he hid 10 years before.  Stupidly, he sends the bag of cash up before he goes.  Madge cuts the rope and Joe falls.  She tries to drive away, but Joe has the keys.

There are good give and takes about how to resolve the impasse.  Ultimately, Joe just taunt her.  They will both die, but at least he will be in a nice cool, shaded mineshaft.   Whereas she will have to make it 100 miles on foot through the blistering desert.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch: Steven Hill still hanging on.
• Holy crap — The $100,000 would be $844,000 in 2015 dollars.
• Everyone in this episode seems to have a sweaty forehead.  And not just in the Mojave, but even in Madge’s apartment.

Carl Kaminsky is like one of those guys with a metal detector on the beach; except he has no metal detector, no straw hat, isn’t wearing shorts and is on a city street.  OK, not so similar — but he is keeping his eyes down looking for anything of interest.

On a grate, he picks up a soaking wet newspaper for reasons I can’t imagine.  Then he spots a wallet and picks it up.  He spends about the same amount of time looking for owner as OJ did looking for the real killers — then pockets the wallet.

He goes home to a very humble apartment and his wife Anna (Jo Van Fleet).  Fleet was last seen as a thoroughly repulsive shrew in Dangerous People.  Here, she is not as insane, but despite being abused by her brutish husband, she is no more likable or sympathetic a character.

Carl is in, what apparently for him, is a good mood even though he is still cruel to Anna.  And he’s not mentioning the wallet to her.  She asks what he is so happy about, he tells her to “shut up with the questions.”  Christ, what is this guy like on a bad day?

Finally he does whip out the wallet and shows her that it contains 52 $100 bills, and there is no name in the wallet.  Anna’s plan is to return the wallet in anticipation of a big reward.  Carl has a slightly different plan.

The next day, Anna sees an ad in the paper offering a generous reward for the wallet.  Anna wants to call, but Carl says he will return the wallet to the owner.  He comes home furious, telling Anna that there was no reward.  He then heads up to the attic to hide the wallet.

Two weeks later, Anna is still pissed about being stiffed on the reward. She sees that the ad is still running in the paper, then she is really pissed and catches Carl counting the Bejamins in the attic.

Soon, Anna is buying new furniture, a new dress, and a mink coat.  When Carl demands that she return it, she threatens to call the owner of the wallet.  After a screaming match where Anna smacks Carl and dares her to hit her back, he retreats to the attic.

She brings him a poisoned cup of coffee while he is counting the money yet again.  He clubs her to death with a statuette, then drinks the coffee.

It’s a great story, but the leads are so repulsive that it is impossible to have any empathy for them.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors among those with data on IMDb.

Professor Donald Mason is reading from Richard III (bloody sequels!). One student in particular is enthralled. Claudia stays after class and asks if the line “my conscience hath a thousand several tongues” is Freudian — yikes!  She asks if he is getting a guilt complex — it is clear they are having an affair.

Just wait until Act 6 when she reads “My kingdom for a horse.”  Now that will give him a complex.

When he tries to make an excuse not to see her that night, she busts him on his alibi and says she knows that this is his wife’s gym class night.

That night, Mason suggests that he and his wife go for a drive or to a movie.  When she enters the room, we see she is played by Alfred’s daughter, Pat Hitchcock.  After playing a series of spinsters, maids, schoolmarms and “nottie” friends, here she is cast as the dowdy wife who can’t possibly compete with Claudia on a physical level.  It is piling on to have her character going to the gym — it just ain’t gonna make a difference. She even says, “I’ve got to control my figure if I want to compete with all the jail-bait in your classes.”

Claudia calls him at home.  She says she took a babysitting job at his next-door neighbors, the Davidsons — and can see him right that second. She invites him over after his wife leaves, but he refuses.  Yeah, but he does show up as soon as Pat is out of the house.

Claudia surprises Mason by suggesting they get married.  When he says that is impossible, she threatens to “ruin him forever.”  Then he ruins her forever by strangling her. Then the baby starts crying.

The next day a detective comes to question him.  The detective says that there is a witness, but Mason is relieved to hear that he is just talking about the baby.  “If only she could talk,” the detective says.

He is less relieved when his wife tells him later that at one year, babies start to understand the world.  That there are cases where babies start to talk about things that they saw before they could speak.  At 14 months, this kid could start squealing soon.  And not in the good way . . . no, wait . . .  yes, the good way.

Mason sees Mrs. Davidson in the yard and she says the baby has been acting strange.  When Mason leans in to look at her, she screams at him.  Mason starts getting paranoid that the baby is growing up and will be talking soon.  Later that day, he peeks at the baby again, setting her off.

The next day, leaving for work, he sees the baby in a stroller and learns that she has said her first word, “Dada.”  Now that the tike is capable of discussing the early 20th avant-garde art scene, we see in his eyes that he is actually thinking about strangling the baby.

Just in case you aren’t clear — this is the Police Station.

Overcome with paranoia, he goes to the police station and confesses.

Mr. Davidson finally gets home from Germany.  When he looks in on his daughter, she again begins screaming.  Mrs. Davidson says the baby is always around women, so has that reaction whenever she sees a man.

There are really no problems here other than it is just a ludicrous plot point to worry that a 14-month old baby is going to rat you out.

One negative is that the beautiful Claudia (Delores Hart) disappears from the story so early.  She also disappeared from Hollywood pretty early, having no credits after age 25.  According to IMDb, she became a nun and remains one to this day.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Patricia Hitchcock, and Katherine Warren Theodora Davitt and Dolores Hart are still holding on. [CORRECTED]
• At 37, the Professor is almost exactly twice as old as Claudia.  I am very disturbed by this; I mean disturbed that I didn’t go into teaching.
• The Professor’s name is Don on IMDb and is referred as Don in Hitchcock’s remarks.  In the episode, however, he is called Bob.