rms125a

Worst Hitchcock episode I have ever seen. The amoral psycho brother angle had potential but the rest is ridiculous. It is just an unconvincing waste of airtime by a defeated cast resorting to overacting. The characters are stereotypes, especially young Tommy and his mother. Even Hitchcock's opening and closing are cheesily awful.

Maybe we should be grateful it was just a half hour episode. A full hour would have been torture. A very sad blemish on an A list brand. Poor Hitchcock. I hope he never bothered to watch this one. I know I am sorry I did. Just goes to show that quality cannot be sustained indefinitely without the ineffable perspiration of genius.

Try and catch this surprisingly scary, very compact, and coldly unforgiving little offering with its unexpected dystopian ending.

It's a much better and more potent project (for the small screen!) than SO many of the ubiquitous and ridiculous overrated over-budgeted big screen films that cost (waste) tens of millions of dollars or more, in my humble opinion.

The Mowry sisters show they have some real acting heft, as, respectively, the increasingly tortured Janice Robinson and the evil creature which remorselessly takes over her form and, soon, her life. The rest of the cast is able but the Mowrys own this episode.

I thought this film would be sizzling but it was a bit tepid for my taste. Powell, better known as a singer and director, is miscast but tries hard. Trevor is all she should be and then some. Scarier than Barbara Stanwyck's character in "Double Indemnity" (who seems like a bored hausfrau in comparison, but Stanwyck got the better film by far.) Mazurki is huge and scary and relentless. Anne Shirley is the sweet mostly innocent stepdaughter of Trevor's character. That about sums it up. It's too convoluted. Or more accurately, the screenplay isn't a narrative that makes sense but rather a string of lurid incidents or coincidences strung indifferently on a cheap gaudy (definitely not jade) necklace.

(SPOILER ALERT: The jade necklace was never missing so why all the pretense that it was? Never fully explained to my satisfaction. Helen has a doting millionaire husband but it's not enough for her? Maybe I just couldn't read between the Breen Office censored lines.)

This episode is pretty stupid. And, while I am not politically correct, the casting of Peter Lorre as a Mexican private eye, is distasteful. Thomas Gomez would have been ideal.

The goofs are absurd. Three people cross the border into Mexico from California despite the tricky immigration status of one, an elderly Englishwoman. She dies in her sleep without the other two realizing it. Her documents are not checked by the Mexican authorities on entering Mexico. When the others realize she died they don't alert the police but leave her in the car and go to a cantina. The old woman had been the most interesting character and the episode goes downhill from there. The ending is tame though considering any number of nightmarish consequences that could have taken place. Even the final twist is very gentle by Hitchcock standards but not particularly rewarding or funny.

Steer clear.

This episode is ludicrous. It's like a Mad-TV version of "A Streetcar Named Desire" which star Tandy debuted to acclaim on Broadway. Main difference is that the episode is set in 1910 NYC not 1940s New Orleans.

Tandy's Edwina Freel here is not that dissimilar from Blanche DuBois and shares the same consignment to a mental institution at the end -- although far more happily as Freel had only recently escaped from such an institution and was longing to return. The men from the asylum or sanitarium are as pleasant as possible. The other characters also roughly replicate characters from "Streetcar": Mr. McGurk (Stanley Kowalski), Mrs. McGurk (Eunice Hubbell), and, of course, Mr. Birch, who is a kinder, smarter, more mature Mitch.

The ending, in which Edwina's "baby", "Toby", is revealed as a black cat (and left in Birch's care), is hilarious.

Tandy must have seen the similarities to "Streetcar". I wonder what she thought. She certainly played it straight.

Excellently acted, especially by lead actress Inger Stevens who plays Jana, who has learned a lot about Iife but is missing one enormous fact about herself, which she will realize before the end of the episode. The claustrophobic atmosphere, disconnected from society and the greater world (despite the unfortunate video format) is eerily evoked.

John Hoyt and Irene Tedrow are Jana's loving but self-absorbed elderly parents, Dr. & Mrs. Loren. The episode opens to Tedrow being given a massage from the maid Nelda and making what her daughter accurately describes as "animal grunts of pleasure", which are distracting but point out the venality that lies under the veneer of respectability. Irene Tedrow, who usually played staid, comedic or matronly types, manages to draw it out, both genteely and carnally at the same time, while giving the first hint to the audience that something is not quite right in this otherwise seemingly normal affluent household.

The creepy all-efficient robot servants are well-portrayed, and the overcontented parents are excellently portrayed by Hoyt and Tedrow who force themselves back into reality to face their daughter's existential crisis, then make the necessary adjustments and return to their isolated overcontentment. Stevens gives a bravura performance, as noted above.

Interesting vibes between "Teacher" and Al, the character played by Don Johnson. Seems like "Teach" may have more than a teacher-student relationship on his mind which seemed to explain his later murderous edict after horny rebellious Al hooks up with a wild-child teenaged girl who has successfully hidden her true nature from her own grandmother. "Teach" tells his other "students" (acolytes) that it's for safety and a bigger share of the profits but this is not entirely convincing, especially as he later absconds with all the money himself but is, of course, eventually caught by the cops (off-camera).

Also interesting is how unclear it is if the "Teacher" is actually blind (he explains how he inadvertently caused an explosion that went off in front of his face and when he goes outside he wears dark glasses and walks with a cane, neither of which he does indoors) or only partially-sighted -- he is so self-reliant he actually seems to just be pretending to be blind.

While it certainly seems that Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None' (ATTWN), also known as 'Ten Little Indians', was influenced by this nine (9) years earlier work, it may or may not be so. Almost everyone is inspired by something seen or heard which later germinates. Christie may or may not have seen the film in question or read the book, who can know. As 'The Ninth Guest' only ran for a dismal 72 performances on Broadway, Christie surely did not see the play. One could propose the same theory of indirect influence regarding the American authors who seemingly plagiarized Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote 'A Study in Scarlet' first and which had some similar themes.

I also disagree with some of the comments in the TRIVIA (SPOILER) section: "Though it runs just over an hour, nearly every element of the film's plot was replicated in Christie's 'Ten Little Indians'":

1) "A coward who offers to collude with the murderer in return for his life being spared" - Totally inaccurate description of the relationship between Dr. Armstrong and Justice Wargrave in ATTWN.

2) "A male character managing the tension by drinking to excess" - Not in ATTWN.

3) "An uneasy romance between two of the characters who suspect each other despite their growing attraction" - In the original rather bleak novel ATTWN (later lightened up for stage, film and television productions), the relationship between Vera Claythorne and Philip Marlowe cannot accurately be described as a romance. Neither loves the other (Marlowe is not even capable of love) and the relationship never gets physical --- aside from And Then There Were None (2015), the latest adaptation of the thriller, which was rewritten and added an orgy scene involving 4 characters --- although as the last two surviving guests the two do form a brief alliance until it is violently destroyed.

4) "The two would-be lovers unraveling the solution to the mystery before they can be killed" - Not in ATTWN novel. Original bleak ending changed later for stage, film, and TV productions.

5) The 1930 work in several instances relies on elaborate electronic devices, more appropriate to the late 20th century or to the 21st century, which are used to constrain victims and inject poison - Christie's work has nothing of that sort.

6) The characters, some of whom know each other intimately, targeted for death in 'The Invisible Host'/'The Ninth Guest' are guilty of such serious but not capital crimes as conspiracy, corruption, and bigamy, and the killer is seeking revenge on those who directly impacted his life, whereas in Christie's ATTWN, each and every guest to the island is a stranger to each other (except the married couple of servants) and each guest (except the one, who will, ironically, kill the others) has evaded justice after being responsible for causing the death of (an)other human being(s).

7) In 'The Invisible Host'/'The Ninth Guest', one completely innocent person is killed (later revealed as the electrician hired by the killer to wire the apartment so a high-voltage charge ran through the metal gate that was the only way to leave), and the fate of the two butlers is not known to those who haven't seen the film or read the book. Moreover, the killer admits to the two innocents and would-be lovers, who leave the apartment before the grim ending, that the whole point of the evening was to get revenge on Margaret, Sylvia, and Cronin. So why invite and kill/try to kill the rest, including the woman he loves? Illogical.

Serious differences. Also, far more tellingly, there is no record of any accusations, much less lawsuits, filed by either Owen Davis and/or Gwen Bristow & Bruce Manning, for plagiarism or any similar such offense against Christie and her publisher, which, based on the above, would have been relatively easy to prosecute, presumably with a good chance of success based upon the superficial evidence.

Cameron Mitchell's repugnant character, Karl (stepfather of Deb, a recovered addict and former courier, who is a friend of Pete) oozes sleaze and desperation. At the episode's beginning, while Karl is being arrested during a drug sting he manages, due to the stupidity of a third party, to get the cop's gun and shoot both officers, at least one fatally. The ultimate fate of the other officer is not spelled out but he is deemed unlikely to make it.

Karl is out of control, trying to sell a key of dope and flee with the proceeds. He talks about how tired he is and, at one point, says he doesn't care yet belies his words by clinging to existence, canny, cunning and sometimes violent. Deb is conflicted, remembering how good Karl was to her late mother, but agrees to help the squad.

This viewer kept wishing Karl would put himself and everyone else out of misery by using the gun on himself but he never does.

Brilliantly acted with some truly harrowing scenes. Jillian Armenante is a scarily effective psychopath here and Christian Camargo's quiet intensity as the husband of one of her victims is equally affecting. The ending could probably have been handled better regarding Camargo's and Arquette's characters given Allison (Patricia Arquette)'s trauma. (After all, this is not Luke & Laura on "General Hospital"!!!)

On the lighter side, Marie Dubois helps her father at work within even realizing it. Bridgette is the same as always. Ariel is away at college and this viewer, at least, sorely misses her.

Great, well-acted episode but I am unclear. Were Victor and Nora really brother and sister killers? Or were they more than that or something else? Either way, a very creepy vibe by the end of the episode.

A good episode, but strained by implausible casting. William Converse-Roberts and Millie Perkins are far too young for the roles they play, as Annie Potts's father and grandmother. Converse-Roberts is about the same age as Potts, while Perkins (too young to be Potts's mother in real life) is far too youthful and fresh-faced as Potts's character's dementia-ridden GRAND(!)mother.

Richard Mulligan plays a German masquerading as American "Major Lansing" and Vincent Gardenia, speaking Italian fluently (never heard him speak Italian onscreen before although he was of Italian descent on both sides) both give good performances. Mulligan's arrogant overbearing duplicitous Teuton is matched by Gardenia's honorable Italian Captain Centis, who has surrendered himself to the Americans as he has a bunch of wounded men who need medical attention. When Centis recognizes Lansing as a German, and Lansing reveals his plans to kill the Allied General Maclean, Centis, who cares more about getting help to his men, rejects Lansing and tries to warn the Americans. Centis is shot by Lansing for his troubles but survives.

This episode's guest stars were mostly poorly cast (aside from Dena Dietrich) and unfunny, except for some slapstick bits featuring Jeffrey Tambor, whose character's back is out and is confined to a chair which goes spinning this way and that, especially when given a firm push, most notably by Dietrich whose statuesque but overbearing and acquisitive character is one of sweet Helen Roper's two sisters. Aside from Dietrich, this is one unfunny episode.

Only good thing about this film was an excellent performance by Giancarlo Giannini as a conflicted Italian police inspector in Firenze (Florence) whose avarice leads him to do the wrong things and ultimately become a victim of you-know-who around half-way through the film. The rest (roughly the second half) is increasingly awful, and, by the end, just gross and disgusting. Jodie Foster (who refused to reprise her role as Clarice Starling) made clear her personal disregard and distaste for this film. Sad that Anthony Hopkins DID agree to make it -- must have been for the money.

Well-acted and enlivened by the Sydney, Australia vibe and exteriors, this episode borrows a lot from Agatha Christie's "Witness for the Prosecution", which, with a somewhat sanitized ending, was expanded from a very short story (three or so pages, originally) into a 1950s London stage play of the same name (starring Patricia Jessel and Gene Lyons on Broadway from 1954-56) and later into the iconic film Witness for the Prosecution (1957), which starred Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power. It has been made for television as well.

Good work by all involved, especially Patrick Labyorteaux as Bud Roberts, who, after an unfortunate mishap, has to have his jaw wired shut and, no matter what he says, sounds like he is muttering gibberish.

Interesting and well-acted but much or most of the plot, main characters, and dynamics are pretty blatantly ripped off from the film Inside Man (2006).

Well acted and suspenseful but this would have been a far better film had it not been drastically cut. (I miss Ruth Gordon.) It also needed subtitles. Way too much German spoken with no subtitles. A little German one can decipher but entire military conversations? I think not. The horrors of submarine/U-boat bombings of Allied ships, though, is crystal clear.

Good episode about pornography, murder, the mob, white slavery, and a new and frightening milestone in depravity -- the snuff film. (Hugh O'Brian, playing Sergeant Daley, looks absurd in one scene wearing an ascot tied around his neck and sporting, throughout the entire episode, sadly, a moustache that would not be out of place in one of the skin flicks the cops are investigating, though, LOL.)

Despite the talents of Abe Vigoda, Henry Gibson, and Rich Little (the only amusing characters in this episode), this is nothing but an unfunny takeoff on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

Amazingly unfunny, especially compared to National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985). Chevy Chase acquits himself pretty well and is amusing but the rest of the cast really do not tickle any funny bones. Treatment of veteran actress Imogene Coca is outrageous, basically cinematic elder abuse ("sit down and shut up"). Gag about family dog being hooked up to the back of the car and being, well ... is not remotely amusing. I guess the European vacation film had better writers.

Pat Hingle, wisely underplaying rather than engaging in his usual overly self-indulgent style, is quite scary as "Absolem Weir", who is either an incarnation of the devil or just an exceptionally vicious, ruthless and rather creepy man, who, as another character points out, has done well from the misfortune of others and who somehow gets wherever he needs to go without ever needing a horse. The sunny but equivocal ending does not reveal which of the two Weir is, although the consensus among the Lancers is that "Weir" is the latter. And while the smell of sulphur that Jelly Hoskins has been smelling a lot of lately has gone and evil may have left the Lancers' environs it most likely has just moved elsewhere.

Hard to believe Thornton Wilder, the author of the comedy "The Merchant of Yonkers" (on which the hit musical "Hello Dolly was based), also wrote "Our Town", always a minimalized (no sets per se, mostly tables and chairs) production (except for the Hollywood big screen version, starring William Holden and Martha Scott as George and Emily, with a sanitized happy ending), about the mundane lives of the Gibbs and Webb families and their neighbors in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, early in the 20th century.

Act 1 presents an ordinary day in the life of the town. Act 2 carries the story forward with the courtship and marriage of George Gibbs (Robby Benson, who is fine but struggles slightly with a New England accent) and Emily Webb (the luminous Glynnis O'Connor). The two eventually marry after George has an attack of nerves and considers backing out, only to be chastised and straightened out by his mother. Emily also has her jitters. However, the marriage does go forward.

Act 3 gives an interesting but almost unrelentingly sad counterpoint to the first two scenes. Set entirely in the village's cemetery with the dead seated unmoving and mostly silent, we learn that someone has died but we do not immediately learn who. It turns out that Emily Webb Gibbs has died while giving birth to her second child. Mrs. Soames asks Julia Gibbs (both women are deceased and sitting in the cemetery) what Emily died from, and Mrs. Gibbs (who somehow knows) says Emily died in childbirth. The marriage, despite her and George's initial jitters and fears, had been a happy one, and George appears to be doing well as a farmer. Mrs. Soames (played with great warmth by Charlotte Rae) responds: "Childbirth. I had forgotten all about that. My, wasn't life awful ... and wonderful", to which Simon Stimson, in life the competent but increasingly embittered and alcoholic church organist (the reason for his turbulent life never explained), whom the audience learns had committed suicide but was still permitted a decent burial, takes umbrage. Emily then appears, her hair beribboned, and takes her seat. As she carries no child with her it is presumed the baby survived. She greets some of her newfound company who politely reply while her mother-in-law insists that the new arrival "rest".

During and after her funeral, Emily converses with Mrs. Gibbs, who we learn, died of pneumonia while visiting her married daughter, Rebecca, in Ohio (Rebecca does not appear in this act). We also learn that Emily's younger brother, Wally, died as a child when his appendix burst, thus now leaving the Webbs predeceased by both of their children, although the Stage Manager does not reference this awful twist of fate. Emily suddenly realizes it is possible to return to the sphere of the living after being transported momentarily while thinking about her life. She is warned against this by both Mrs. Gibbs (cryptically) and Mrs. Soames (slightly less cryptically), and the Stage Manager indicates the futility of it. But Emily insists and selects her 12th birthday (February 11, 1899) as the day to return to but soon realizes it's not what she thought it would be.

Seeing her parents (but not her brother, whose early death, even before her own, would likely have convulsed her) breaks her heart. Emily keeps saying that she never recalled her mother looking so young. But it all goes too fast and people don't look at or really listen to one another, bustling about as though they had forever to enjoy life.

Simon Stimson, who, despite the Stage Manager's insistence that the dead are "weaned away" from their former lives, is still raw and talks bitterly, upon the least prompting, of the ''ignorance and blindness'' of the living after Emily recounts how painful the experience was. Simon talks of how people "move about in a cloud of ignorance . . . Always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another". To which Mrs. Gibbs (played by Sada Thompson with a quiet intensity), who has clearly assiduously mastered "the weaning away" from the world of the living -- and who shows no reaction when her widower, Dr. Gibbs (Ned Beatty, showing a powerful but restrained emotion) stops briefly by her grave to leave flowers -- replies "spiritedly", as the stage directions indicate, perhaps triggered to defend Emily by some dormant but not fully extinguished instinct (and does so with considerably more fire than she has shown or will show again), "That ain't the whole truth, Simon Stimson, and you know it."

Unfortunately, Wilder didn't consider giving Mrs. Gibbs a next line: "Now see what you made me do, Simon", given that her interplay with Simon will have set her back from the weaning process which she has apparently mastered, remaining motionless while the audience can only guess at what lies behind the polite frozen visage and poignantly dark but somehow vacant eyes. Simon has forced her from her advanced "weaned" state into a plane she clearly -- and up until Emily's arrival, quite successfully so -- means to put behind her. Simon, however, can't quite do so.

George Gibbs then comes by, after the other mourners have all departed. He breaks down by his wife's grave. Emily shows only a brief tinge of emotion and Julia Gibbs remains indifferent.

The Stage Manager, superficially folksy but commanding (as played by Hal Holbrook; Sterling Gray was apparently, although I didn't see his acclaimed performance, less steely in the role) and all-knowing character who serves as the narrator, sums up the play, and sends the audience home.

Sadly, the scenes with John Houseman were cut from the final work product before it was released on television.

ADDENDUM: According to Wikipedia, "In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin "on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave", which sounds quite facetious.

West finds himself invited to the aptly-named Bleak Island owned by a single wealthy family, who, with some servants, are the island's sole occupants. A howling (which West first attributes to a hound, but is told there are no pets) attributed to a local monster (but which is no such thing, of course) is heard by West and later at dinner. Beverly Garland, in a rare icy role, is quite incisive as Celia Rydell, the cold and domineering sister of the man (Joseph Bleak) whose will is to be read.

Estimable veteran British thespian John Williams -- who played Chief Inspector Hubbard, the Scotland Yard detective who figures out the truth and tricks Ray Milland's character into revealing himself as the would-be wife killer in Dial M for Murder (1954) -- appears as Sir Nigel Scott, another Scotland Yard detective role, who is an acquaintance of West, having worked on a case in London together some five years earlier. The two had no idea the other would be on the island.

They investigate the mysteries and murders. Jana Taylor and Mark Chambers play Celia's attractive ward and handsome artist nephew, Alicia Crane and Mark Chambers, who are, of course, secretly in love.

The hound (which turns out to be real, in an ironic twist, but only relatively recently arrived), the creepy but luxurious mansion, and the remote island accessible to the mainland only by boat, are tropes in homage to "Ten Little Indians" and "The Hound of the Baskervilles", but there the convoluted similarities end. Some big surprises await West and the audience as well as the usual finale in which West ultimately prevails.

Masquerading band of thieves led by a pair of Shakespearean thespian brothers with a disconcerting tendency towards ruthlessness.

Reviewer searchanddestroy-1 is correct that there is no fantasy aspect but a good Western procedural. And as far as West (Conrad)'s attire, it is true that (aside from the last few minutes at the end) he does not dress as usual but the skimpy beefcake attire only makes him that much sexier. Lucky Lana Wood!