We continue our look “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” with episodes from season three directed by Hitch himself. As in season two, Hitch directed just three episodes of the series this time out.
Alfred Hitchcock’s first episode in season three of his TV series is “The Perfect Crime,” broadcast on October 20, 1957, and starring Vincent Price and James Gregory, best known as Inspector Luger from the TV series “Barney Miller.” It’s essentially a two-man show, with Price as a self-important detective and Gregory as a defense attorney in New York City, around the 1920s.
Gregory has paid a visit to Price’s apartment to talk about a murder case Price had solved involving a small handgun that’s part of his display of murder weapons. Price tells the story of that case, explaining how he solved the murder, and how criminals always make obvious mistakes that allow him to catch them.
The tables turn when Gregory explains that there’s another side of the story: the truth, which is that Price sent the wrong person to the electric chair. Confronted with the truth, Price agrees to stay away from Gregory’s clients, but then turns and strangles Gregory. We rejoin Price sometime later, on his return from a vacation, when he’s being visited by reporters, and he drops a few hints to tell us he had burned the body and put the ashes in a vase.
Production codes being what they were at the time, Hitchcock used his final segment to explain that a cleaning woman knocked over the vase only to find gold fillings among the ashes, which implicated Price in the death of Gregory. “The Perfect Crime” is a fun, chatty tale worthy of Edgar Allan Poe, with a teleplay by Stirling Silliphant, who later wrote “In the Heat of the Night,” “The Towering Inferno” and “The Poseidon Adventure.”
Barbara Bel Geddes stars in “Lamb to the Slaughter,” adapted for television by Roald Dahl from his own story and first seen on April 13, 1958. In this episode, perhaps the best known from the entire run of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” Bel Geddes plays pregnant housewife Mary Malone, who awaits her police captain husband’s return at the end of the workday. When he arrives he acts withdrawn and uncommunicative, but she tries to help him, offering to cancel their dinner plans and fix something simple.
As she walks toward the kitchen, her husband finally speaks, explaining that he intends to divorce her. She begs him not to, but he refuses to discuss the matter. Looking shaken to the core, she go to the freezer to get a piece of meat for his dinner. She selects a large leg of lamb, unwraps it, carries it to where he stands in the living room, and smashes in his head with it. Then, after making sure he’s dead, she goes ahead and puts the murder weapon in the oven to cook.
As she had planned earlier, she slips out to the corner store for some vegetables. On her return home, she calls the police and messes up the living room to make it look like there had been a scuffle. The police soon arrive, question her and examine the room. The evening grows late, and she offers the police some of the dinner she had been cooking for her late husband. The episode ends as the police enjoy the delicious weapon that killed their captain.
“Lamb to the Slaughter” is a fun episode, full of dark humor, filmed in a fairly straightforward way. There’s a bit of split-second editing when Bel Geddes swings that leg of lamb; we see both her and her husband as she swings, and then – an edit! – followed by a closeup of just her as he is struck.
Bel Geddes made several other appearances in the series, as well as acting for Hitchcock again in “Vertigo.”
Keenan Wynn plays an American traveller, Mr. Butibol, on the Queen Mary in “Dip in the Pool,” based on another story by Roald Dahl that ran on June 1, 1958. His wife has just inherited some money from a relative, and while she wants to tour Europe, he would rather spend time in the casinos. After dressing for dinner in his favorite gaudy plaid jacket, he meets with a man he’s befriended on the voyage, who is both more worldly and more wealthy.
The friend and his wife find Butibol a bit on the gauche side, but the man puts up with him, agreeing to a drink after dinner “at the pool.” The pool, it turns out, is not for swimming – it’s a daily auction of lots to bet on the day’s travel. Later, at the auction, Butibol tries to use what information he’s gleaned from various members of the ship’s crew before bidding most of his remaining money on the low end of the estimated miles travelled.
The next morning, Butibol awakens to realize that the ship is making better speed than expected – and that he is likely to lose. Then, he concocts a plan: He’s going to find someone to witness him falling into the water. The ship will be forced to stop while he is rescued, drastically cutting its progress so that he can win the pool. Unfortunately, the woman he picks is a poor choice. She watches him jump overboard rather serenely, and when her mother comes along, we learn that she is recovering from a nervous breakdown. Her mother tells her there was no man, and that is the end of Butibol.
Wynn is always fun to watch, and his coarse manner makes him believable as a social climber. On an odd note, the wife of Butibol’s friend is played by Fay Wray. Also, Hitchcock’s intro and final notes show him on a deck chair, out at sea; during the opening, he’s reading a copy of the new “Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.”
The Hitchcock Report 