We get off to a rough start as a really unattractive dentally-challenged little girl — Hildegard — begins directly addressing the camera.

OK, I’m embarrassed to say she won me over almost immediately.

She is writing an essay about her hometown and especially Mr. Anderson.  She believes her father is a little too good looking for a preacher, but is not overly complementary about her mother despite her being extremely hot.

Once Hildegard hears that new resident Anderson won’t allow the annual bazaar to be held in his home’s garden, where it has been held for 75 years, two things happen — Hildegard invades his personal space to change his mind, and we assume there must be a body buried there.

Hildy is friends with an old woman whose son has heard of Mr. Anderson and says he is a retired judge.

At a party where here elderly friend is conducting a seance, Hildy hides under the table and pretends to be a spirit.  She outs Anderson as being a judge.  For some reason, he did not want this known.  Its not like he was a child molester or a senator.

Anderson turns over a new leaf and becomes a new man, even contributing a stained glass window to the church.

Sadly, Mr. Anderson soon dies, making little Hildy cry.  It turns out there was some confusion over his identity.  There was a Judge Anderson who retired, but this was not him. This man was John Laughton, who Judge Anderson had sentenced to 15 years in prison for strangling his wife.  He apparently thought it was a good joke to take that name, kind of like Sawyer on Lost.

Hildegard says he “never told on any one even though they told on him.  He was the kindest man I ever knew — next to my father.”  The wife-strangler was 2nd only to her preacher-father?  Was this the preacher from Seventh Heaven?

Ha-cha-cha!!!

Another tame but fun story from Winnie the Pooh creator, A.A. Milne, who also contributed the story for the bloodless The Three Dreams of Mr. Findlater.

Hildgard carries the entire episode on her shoulders and pulls it off even for a curmudgeon like me.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Still a couple of live ones: Evelyn Rudie (who was only 8 when this aired) and Rebecca Welles.
• AHP Proximity Alert: Edith Green appeared in an episode just 2 weeks earlier.  C’mon, give someone else a chance!
• Cedric Hardwicke, played Ramseses’s father and Moseses’s uncle in The Ten Commandments per Wikipedia.  I thought Ramses and Moses were brothers, but I only saw the movie; I didn’t read the book.

This episode, set in 1919 London, seems to have been the beneficiary of some available sets which make it more interesting than the story itself.

In foggy London town, we follow a business-man who has just gotten off the train.  Walking through the station, he stops at a newsstand and picks up a paper, declines to buy a flower offered from a tray by an old woman, and turns to walk down a foggy tunnel which opens onto a foggy street.  Conveniently, he lives the second door down.  He waves to an acquaintance whistling Greensleeves as he enters.  His journey is a single shot that lasts over a minute with just one edit at the flower lady.

He arrives home and seems pretty excited that his wife is making kippers.  There is a knock at the door, and we shift to the visitor’s POV.  The man invites him in for dinner, but we see hands reach out and strangle him.

The man’s nephew stops by while the police are at the crime scene.  A pushy reported barges in, but is turned away as the ambulance arrives.  Lucky Officer Otterpoole was on the job.

The newspaper chides the cops when the crime is not solved after 4 days

Next, the flower lady is strangled by man she knows whistling Greensleeves.

Hanging out at the police station, the reporter and a cop agree that the man must be a foreigner, like the heavily accented Ottermole; who drinks tea, like Ottermole is doing at that very second; is smiling at the police’s inability to catch the murderer, like Ottermole.  And have two hands — like Ottermole!!!

Next a cop is found dead, so shit gets real.

In the pub, the reporter talks about how when something is right before our eyes, we don’t stop to ask how it got there — “like that ham sandwich.”  Is this a reference to Ottermole aka the police aka pigs?  OED has references of cops as pigs as far back as 1811.

The reporter figures it out and brilliantly confronts Office Ottermole on a lonely foggy street.  Ottermole says he doesn’t know why he killed the people.  His hands seem to have a mind of their own.  He strangles the reporter before being grabbed from behind.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Only Theodore Bikel is still with us.
• The title just rubs your face in the fact that it is a cheat.  But then “The Hands of Officer Ottermole” would have taken some of the suspense out of the story.
• A kipper is also known as a red herring.
• Ellery Queen wrote of Thomas Burke’s original 1941 story, “No finer crime story has ever been written, period.”
• The tune to Greensleeves is the same as the Christmas carol, What Child is This.

A group of reporters are hanging out a bar swapping stories, as opposed to now when they would be at a swanky cocktail party hosted by the people they are supposed to be covering, drinking mineral water and nibbling at a low-carb amuse bouche.

Halloran is established as a guy who likes a good practical joke.  That his jokes frequently end up in tragedy seems of no concern to him.

Local bum Johnny enters the bar and hits Halloran up for a drink.  Mr. H tells the bartender to “give him the good stuff.”  The bartender reaches under the bar where he just happens to have a shot already poured.  Johnny just about pukes when it turns out to be furniture polish.  Mr. H. gets a good laugh out of this, and Johnny tells him, “You didn’t have to do that!”  Unless Halloran psychically made the bartender pour the shot and place it under the bar waiting for this gag, I don’t really see how Halloran is at fault.  But he’s still an asshole for laughing.

Another newsie rushes in and gives Halloran the last edition hot off the press.  It says the world will end at 11:45 after a collision with Mars.  Johnny rushes out of the bar thinking he must do something special with the three remaining hours of his life.  Of course, the gang gets a huge laugh out of the prank they just pulled.  Maybe I misunderestimated Halloran; he is Schofieldian-level planner.

I think they use the same science adviser as The Twilight Zone.  OK, maybe it is possible that Mars has been broken out of its orbit and will collide with Earth.  But is it likely we would have only 3 hours notice?  Meh, I can always overlook problems like that in old sci-fi, but anything in color better not pull that crap.

To make the most of his last 3 hours on earth, Johnny flees the bar and goes to a liquor store — this is a guy with a limited world-view.  He begs the clerk for some free hooch since “it can’t make no difference now.”  The clerk understandably thinks he’s nuts. When his back is turned, Johnny grabs a couple jugs of Cognac (because the good stuff is always sold in 3000 ml bottles) and bolts out the door.

Chugging it in the park, he eludes the police.  He trips over the dogs being walked by an elderly woman.  She takes him back to her place to clean his jacket, and makes him some tea.  She is also a lonely person,  and Johnny is first man in 15 years she’s had in the house.  She understandably gets a little spooked when he says they will be together at her house until the world ends.  She screams for help and a neighbor arrives to throw Johnny out.

Wandering the streets, he encounters 3 young street urchins.  He asks the kids what they most want, and breaks into a sporting goods store to fulfill their dreams.  They go crazy shooting hoops, riding bikes and, inexplicably, fishing in the store.  One of them wants a gun, so Johnny helpfully gets a pistol and loads it for the tike.  A cop comes in and Johnny shoots him when he tries to stop the fun.  The kids bolt.

Johnny stops by a newsstand and is baffled that the newspapers contain headlines such as Naughton Accepts Nomination, Boxing Commission Charges Bribe, Crooner Jailed for Assault.  Johnny realizes he has been punked when the New York Times does not have the headline:

EARTH TO BE DESTROYED

WOMEN AND MINORITIES HARDEST HIT

OK, that’s an oldie; but a greatie.

Johnny returns the bar, still packing the heat he took from the store.  It just so happens he arrives at the bar, where the gang is playing cards, exactly at the supposed impact time of 11:45 PM.  Then, it truly is worlds in collision.

Great stuff.

Post-Post:

• At what point did the pronunciation go from saddist to saydist?  I recall Rod Serling using saddist on TZ also.
• One of the kids was a 14 year-old Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Simpsons).
• AHP Deathwatch: At least two of the kids are still alive, including Harry Shearer.
• Story by Frederic Brown, who wrote the classic Arena on which the Gorn episode of Star Trek was extremely loosely based.
• IMDb’s trivia on director Jus Addiss says he was the “life partner” of Hayden Rorke (Dr. Bellows on I Dream of Jeannie).  I did not know that.

The ubiquitous John Williams just appeared in I Killed the Count three episodes ago.  That  story was told over the span of 3 weeks and still seemed shorter than tonight’s offering.

Williams is a hen-pecked man of 54 whose nagging wife won’t even let him play solitaire in peace, nagging him about talking to younger women, and taunting him about his thinning hair.  AHP really stacks the deck by casting a woman 12 years older than him as his wife.  Didn’t they know that by Hollywood law, after a 5 year difference, you’re supposed to cast the woman as the mother?

Finally, he has had enough and goes upstairs to his man-cave, decorated with posters of Tahiti, Mexico and Hawaii (still 2 years away from statehood, ergo still officially exotic).  His eyes land on the poster beckoning him to “Come to the South Seas . . . Land of Enchantment” (later bogarted by New Mexico for its license plates).  It also features a woman in a sarong with an orchid behind her ear.  He has named her Lalage.

His imagination sweeps him away to titular Dream # 1 in the South Seas where Lalage welcomes him with a drink served in a pineapple.  She knows how to make him relax even tells him his thinning hair makes him look important and distinguished.  Wow, she’s turning me on!

He confesses that there is a titular Dream # 2 without Lalage where he comes home to find the maid in tears.  Their doctor comes down the stairs and tells him his wife has died of a stroke.

The next day, out for a very British walk in his suit, flat cap, and umbrella in hand, he imagines Lalage in the woods.  She joins him and they fortuitously find an abandoned car with a pistol laying on the seat.  Now that he is packing untraceable heat, he is starting to have a titular Dream # 3 . . . about Minnie.

He and Lalage come up with a plan to murder Minnie involving a goofy disguise and the unlikely act of Williams climbing down a rope from a 3rd story window and back up.  After months of working on an alibi, and his upper body strength, Williams decides it is time to do the deed.

In disguise, he goes to his own house.  The maid meets him in tears just as in Dream # 2.  The doctor comes down the stairs just as in Dream # 2.  And Minnie has had a stroke just as in Dream # 2.

So what?  This is AHP — where is the murder?  Where is the post-game comeuppance?  Minnie died just as Williams desired, and he is completely in the clear as he did nothing to cause her death.  Hitchcock does not even have his standard epilogue in this episode — he is shown asleep and snoring.

He’s not the only one.

OK, it was actually pretty good and Williams is always a pro.  It’s just not what I’m looking for from AHP.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
• The name Lalage shows up in several places, but nothing seems relevant to her character — a yacht, an asteroid, a few animals.  The name shows up in a Roman Legion marching song by Kipling.  It would have been a nice allusion if Williams had been working on a history of the Roman Legion rather than Exminster.
• Story by A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh.  Is that why there is no killing?  Although that Eeyore was really asking for it.

Dick York plays young tough Manny Coe . . . well, we can stop right there.  Dick York’s appearance in this role belongs in the Miscasting Hall of Fame.  When he walks in to the gangsta’s apartment and pulls a gun on him, the incongruity between that act and his gaunt boyish mug, pencil-neck, reedy voice, and loosely-hanging leather jacket is absurd.  There is a reason Dick York was cast as the panicky husband in Bewitched — he is not a bundle of confidence and gravitas.  This is like the time George-Michael bought the leather jacket on Arrested Development.

He calmly shoots the gangsta, Boss William’s former deputy who has botched a heist.  His girlfriend sees the murder in the paper and asks him about it.  He says he hasn’t killed anybody.  He lays her down and starts kissing her, no more convincing in this scene than the last.  Of course, how he bagged Samantha on Bewitched was also a great TV mystery of LOSTian proportions.  She wants him to get out of “da life” and get a real job, away from Mr. Williams.

York storms out of the apartment and sees Russell Johnson on the stoop playing a harmonica — another huge casting blunder.  Like York, he would later go on to a role that he portrayed to perfection, the Professor on Gilligan’s Island.  But here playing a hipster named Turk, saying “man”, it just doesn’t work.

York goes to Boss William’s penthouse and is offered the job as the boss’s new deputy.  Strangely, during the interview, York pours some liquid into a tiny glass too small for a demitasse, or a shot, or even a demi-shot.  He hands it to Williams who uses it as an eyewash.  Hunh?  Maybe whatever he was doing was commonplace in the 50’s.  And, oh by the way, he tells York that his girlfriend must be killed.

Seems Williams fears Betty is a rat, and all rats have to suck the pipe (in the words of Dennis Miller).  Sadly, Williams is being 100% figurative.  A mere 50% figurative would have been a treat for York.  He gets as far as pulling a gun on her, but can’t pull the trigger.  She swats the gun away and runs away.  Unfortunately, she is hit by a car and killed.  Williams compliments York on making the death look like an accident.

1950’s booty call.

Unfortunately, York is not so lucky on his next assignment and botches the job.  Soon he has a visitor at his apartment — a short, even younger kid with ambition and an ill-fitting leather jacket.  At least this kid seems to have a short-man’s complex chip on his shoulder, so he is slightly more menacing.  You know, in that silly short-man way.

Hence the titular Vicious Circle.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Only Kathleen Hughes and Mickey Kuhn are still with us.
• Based on the eyewashes and dark glasses, I diagnose Boss Williams as having conjunctivitis aka pink eye.  I appreciate that it was part pf the scene, but was never commented on.  This is not Chekhov’s Eyewash.