Before watching:  Woohoo!  With a title like that, you know Sir Alfred is going to take the directorial reins for this episode!

After watching:  Master of suspense? Yeah, the suspense was when is something going to happen?

Charles Courtney (Vincent Price) is adding another exhibit to his collection commemorating crimes he has solved.  Back in the old days, this was called evidence and kept by the police or returned to the victim.

He receives a late night visit from defense attorney John Gregory (James Gregory — really, they couldn’t have at least changed the character’s name to Greg Johnson?).  Price notes that he has seen Gregory in the courtroom four times.  All four times, it sounds like Gregory’s clients were found guilty and executed; bizarrely, nothing is really made of that.

Gregory notices a blank spot in Price’s trophy case.  He explains that it is reserved for the titular perfect crime, a real work of art.  Rather than being vacant because the person was — by definition — not caught, it is vacant because Price feels no criminal mastermind has ever risen to his level to deserve the spot.

The conversation turns to the trial of No-First-Name Harrington for the murder of Ernest West.  Gregory says he might have represented Harrington if he had not been out of the country.  Since Harrington was just executed, it sounds right up his alley.

Price recounts in a flashback how West was found dead by his housekeeper.  He is lead to Harrington by analyzing tweed threads, tire treads, footprints, and financial evidence.

A certain stock had risen 57 points in the days leading to West’s murder.  Two days after his death, the stock dropped 63 points.  Price found that Harrington had been selling short as the stock rose and was on the hook for 132,000 share when West was killed.  At the same time that Harrington was selling short, West had been buying up all he could. So Harrington killed West — it was, as Price describes it, “murder for millions.”

There is nothing in that scenario that makes sense.

Gregory finally discloses that he knew West, Harrington and Harrington’s wife Alice.  And furthermore, Harrington was innocent and Gregory can prove it.  He tells an alternate version of the story that begins with the Harringtons and West being in a love triangle.

In another flashback, we see Gregory sitting in a fancy Monte Carlo hotel room talking to Alice.  And I literally mean SEE — for some reason, there is no dialog in the flashbacks other than the narration of the two stars. Alice hands Gregory a letter from her husband which is abusive.  They agree that her husband deserved to be killed.

Gregory brings up other facts that contradict Price’s version of events, or fill in certain gaps.  It soon becomes clear, unfortunately in yet another flashback, that Price has been responsible for sending the innocent Harrington to the gas chamber.

Welllll, let’s not go crazy with that innocent-talk.  Harrington was standing right beside Alice when she shot her husband.  Then he covered it up, or at least did not rat her out.  So really, the only miscarriage of justice is that Alice wasn’t sitting in his lap when he got fried.

Rather than spilling the beans, all Gregory wants is for Price to ease off next time when he has a client facing the death penalty.  Because, while it would be fun the bring the smug Price down to earth, and would benefit society to bring the shooter to justice — the important thing for a defense attorney is to be sure we get as many future murderers back on the street as possible.

This isn’t good enough for Price who fears for his reputation if this ever got out.  So that’s it for Gregory — Price commits the perfect crime.  Sadly, the moral police could not let just this one episode go by with a killer getting away with his crime.  Hitch gave his standard closing, assuring the audience that Price got caught.

The epilogue is a little muddled as we learn that Price stuffed Gregory into his ceramics kiln and made him into a vase.  His hobby of ceramics was quickly mentioned early in the story, so that part is not a complete non-sequitur.  But can the human body be incinerated down to clay?

And it was such a plain vase.  There should have been something to tie it to its source material — like being very fat or thin if that matched the body type of Gregory.  Or a bowl with a lid that resembled a unique hat, or at least color that matched his suit.  Or maybe something like the Hitler Kettle.

Overall, the performers did a great job, but it was just too talky and reliant on narration over the silent flashbacks.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Ironically, Harrington is the only survivor.
• I supposed Gregory’s constant losses to Price were the reason for his extortion.  It just doesn’t really work because Gregory comes across as an confident, intelligent attorney.
• Price took a 2 year world-tour after killing Gregory.  He says he preferred Angkor Wat to the Taj Mahal.  Fine, but that just seems strange to randomly drop in the script.
• Alice’s fate is not given in the episode, but she possibly went on to be part of the biggest crime of the last 50 years.

This one is based on a fairly well known stock scam, but maybe it was fresh in 1957. Since the synopsis gives it away, it is really up to the performances and surprise ending to carry the episode — and they do.

Jack Klugman and EG Marshall are drones in an insurance company.  After 17 years, they are still sitting at the same desks they started at.

One morning, Marshall gets a letter from a J. Cristiani marked “personal.”  In the letter, Mr. Cristiani claims to have supernatural powers and want to share the fruits of his powers with Marshall, a complete stranger.  Even the Obama press corp would question something this fishy.

Cristiani predicts the outcome of a local political race, favoring the underdog.  Marshall believes the letter to be some sleazy plot by the candidate, and really who could say a politician was above any sleazy trick?  But the predicted candidate does prevail.

Another letter arrives predicting the winner of a championship fight.  Cristiani again favors the underdog and is proven correct.

Having squandered the opportunity on the first 2 predictions, Marshall places bets based on the next 3 letters and wins every time.  Klugman tries to convince him that it is just a lucky run, but EG Marshall is convinced that Cristiani can see the future.

The next letter suggests that Marshall might be interested in kicking a few bucks back to the oracle.  Since, he is up $1,000 at this point, it seems reasonable.  In exchange, Cristiani says he will provide a stock market tip and which will return Marshall’s money ten-fold.  So Marshall writes him a $200 check (misspelling his name, for no reason I can detect).

Seeing the fool-proof opportunity for a major score, Marshall makes a big stock purchase on margin backed with bonds he has “borrowed” from work.  He is not 100% confident, though, because in the next scene, we hear him reading back a suicide note he has prepared just in case the stock takes a dive.

Klugman is astounded at how far Marshall has extended himself, helpfully calling him a “poor, stupid slob.”  Marshall has a bottle labeled POISON in his coat pocket just in case.  When the stock market closes, Marshall is stunned to learn that he has made $140,000.

Klugman wants to track down Cristiani, but the Postal Inspector tells him that he has been put in the slammer for mail fraud.  Cristiani had sent out thousands of letters to strangers offering to make them rich (since the letters were handwritten, this was quite an undertaking).  Half of the letters would predict A is the winner, and half would predict B as the winner.  The winners would then get letters again predicting A or B as the winner in the next contest.  And so one until a small group of consistent winners could be hit up for a commission.

Marshall just got lucky.  And now that he has big money (at least in 1957 dollars) and is relaxing on a yacht, I think he will be getting lucky quite a bit.

Meanwhile, Klugman is forced to share an apartment with a childhood friend who was asked to remove himself from his place of residence; that request came from his wife.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
• E.G. Marshall was last seen in A Death in the Family.
• There is a strange bit of business when Marshall is placing his stock order.  Klugman takes a paper bag from his desk and carries it to a door marked MEN.  So is he eating lunch in the Men’s Room?  Is that a men-only lunchroom?
• Why is Marshall translucent when pictured aboard the yacht?

Rosemary Harris and William Shatner are boxing up the possessions of their cousin Julia who just died.  Julia died alone, never married, and Harris wonders if she ever dreamed of leaving the room and escaping her loneliness.

That opens the door for Shatner to tell her story.  It all begins with a glass eye.  Actually, it ends with a glass eye, but that is enough to launch his tale.

Julia (Jessica Tandy) was an aged, decrepit spinster, which in the fifties meant she was 30 and unmarried.  Her only social engagement is taking a local neighbor boy to the music hall.  The insufferable brat goes with her to a ventriloquist act where she is entranced by the ventriloquist Max Collodi.

She asks the brat twice if he thinks Collodi could be Italian.  I don’t know what that meant in the fifties.  She immediately buys another ticket to return alone to see the show again that night.  Now obsessed, she quits her job and begins following him to other theaters like the world’s first Deadhead.

Finally she gains the confidence to try to meet Collodi.  He resists her, saying that he never gives interviews.  She counters, like any good Match.com customer and sends him a photo that is 10 years old.  She wears him down to where he agrees to meet her.  Under certain conditions.

He will only promise her 5 minutes in a dimly-lit room — hey, that’s my line!  She accepts his conditions and nervously gets her self dolled up to meet Max Collodi.  She knocks and Collodi calls for her to enter.  They have a short chat, then Harris sees that her allotted time is just about up.  But she can’t resist just touching his hand.

This leads to one of the great reveals in TV history.  The dummy is actually a Vertically-Challenged American, and Max Colloid is merely a mannequin.  I’ll admit that this caught even me off-guard, but then I hadn’t ready any spoilery blogs.  The mannequin falls over and she runs away in horror, inexplicably scooping up an eyeball as a souvenir.

She kept the eye for the rest of her life as a reminder of her one great love.  Shatner says Collodi went on to be a clown in a small travelling circus.  We cut to him driving a horse-draw wagon, sporting an eye-patch.

The patch really makes no sense as it was the mannequin that lost the glass eye. Maybe the short story explains this.  Other sites claim this is a tribute in honor of “Max” but that doesn’t really makes sense either.

No matter, this is one of the greats.

  The Post-Post:

• Rosemary Harris played Aunt May in the Maguire Spidermans.  And William Shatner, c’mon . . .
• AHP Deathwatch:  Pretty lively group.  Rosemary Harris, Patricia Hitchcock, Paul Playdon and, of course, “The Shat” are still kickin’.
• [Update] Coincidentally, I was just reading an article about Disney’s animated Pinocchio and learned the source of Collodi’s name — Carlos Collodi was the author of The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Bellefontaine enters the train station as a siren whoops in the background.  In the office, another man is warming himself next to a pot-belly stove.  Bellefontaine tries to start a conversation, but the other man — Jones — doesn’t seemed interested.

The clerk in the station tells him the siren is coming from the Home for the Criminally Insane.  They had one go over the wall today.

Bellefontaine observes Jones’ tattered clothes, and the way he muses about the criminally insane as he fondles a fireplace poker.  He concludes that Jones might just be the escapee.  In a panic, he goes to the restroom and loads a pistol that he was carrying in his bag.

In the second act, Jones begins ruminating on the possibility that Bellefontaine is the escaped lunatic.

And that’s when he developed his drinking problem.

There are lots of voice-overs as we hear each man’s rationale for believing the other is the escapee.  I’m not sure if it helps the story that we know neither of the men is the escapee, but maybe there is no other way the story could be told.

It is just a very dull slog. Bellefontaine gives a good performance, but the episode’s strength is that unnerving siren that periodically whoops in the background.

The titular danger here is being bored to death.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch: Only bit-player David Armstrong seems to be among the living.
• Jones was Danny Noonan’s father in Caddyshack.
• Last episode of Season 2.