Reviews

I know that this is three years after planktonrules asked, but the reason that Evan Wallace (George Peppard) and his wife Janet Wallace (Mary Scott) were being so sneaky was that they were in Mexico illegally. Mrs. Tait, Janet's aunt (Isobel Isom) is visiting from England. She is a demanding old bat. They took her to the Spanish missions that are there in California, but she wasn't happy and was being really snippy. She was demanding to go to Mexico. Evan tried to tell her they couldn't because of her visa, but they wanted the 30,000 British pounds she is supposed to leave them so they were polite to her. So when they get to Mexico, they find that Mrs. Tait is dead. They are there illegally and have a dead body in the car. The car gets stolen when they go in a bar to get a drink (understandable)! So they go to private detective Tomas Salgado to try to help them find the car before the body is found!

I totally believe that it is the case that the writer(s), producer(s), & director(s) all got together and dropped a lot of acid (LSD) to put this episode together! The scenes where Joe Mannix was drugged up were wild, the effects were crazy! The negative-like, neon, out of focus people that Mannix saw! After one drugged-out incident, Mannix is in a straitjacket. Gail Fisher (Peggy) and Mariette Hartley (Cara) do both look lovely, though. I have always wanted Mannix's office/apartment, and Mariette's apartment is nice, too! I love that Mannix was a '70s version of an Alpha-Male, tough, film-noir detective! And you have to love Elsa Lanchester's appearance :-)

I believe that the woman who called Mr. Verber (remember when Mr. Crane answered the payphone in the hallway & Mrs. Verber talked to the caller?) is the one he was going to run off with. Mrs. Crane looked surprised, and I think she was surprised because she didn't know that Verber had *another* mistress. She thought that she was the only side piece that Verber had until Mrs. Verber confessed and dropped the bombshell. I really felt bad for Mr. Crane. He was an honest, hard-working man who loved his wife and was a good provider, but his wife didn't appreciate him. What a way for the poor guy to find out about his wife & the himbo neighbor.

As the movie opens, we watch as a woman (John Travolta's wife, but we never see her face) is cutting out articles in the paper about her husband and gluing them in her scrapbook. '40s big band music is playing. They then show her baking a cake from scratch, and we see that it is an anniversary cake. She sets an elegant table with flowers and candles. They show a clock, implying time going by. Then the wife is clearing the unused plates off of the table and we see that the cake is uncut. She takes off her wedding ring and symbollically lays it on top of the scrapbook (showing how she has been a loyal, loving wife). She goes up the stairs into the bathroom. She shoots herself in the head and falls head down into the tub, apparently wanting to make as little mess as possible. We find out that Travolta's son blames him for his wife's suicde. She had found out/realized that Travolta had been having an affair and that is why he didn't come home on their anniversary. We find out that the affair was with Laura Dern, his co-worker. So we *do* know why Travolta acts the way he does. I don't know why so many reviewers said that the suicide is unexplained. It is obvious! He is guilt-ridden for his unfaithfulness being the reason of his wife's suicide and his son's anger towards him. Other reviewers have covered other aspects, but I wanted to clear that up.

I was 9, almost 10, when My World And Welcome To It first started airing in September 1969 (turned 10 in November 1969). I was a fan of William Windom and former child actress Lisa Gerritsen (still am!) as father and daughter John and Lydia Monroe. I liked Joan Hotchkis, too, as John's wife/Lydia's mother Ellen Monroe. (She also played Oscar Madison's - played by Jack Klugman - girlfriend Dr. Nancy Cunningham on eleven episodes of The Odd Couple). I loved John going into his cartoon world and then having to deal with the real world. It was a classic TV show and was given way too short a time (only one season). It truly deserved better and I am glad it is as fondly remembered as these reviews show.

Almost finished watching this movie _again_. This romantic comedy will *never* be surpassed, ever. Clark Gable struts his stuff and shows why he will forever be The King Of Hollywood as reporter Peter Warne. (He even singlehandedly almost killed the market for tank tops when he took off his shirt and there was no tank top underneath, just his very manly chest)! He meets up with Claudette Colbert as Ellie Andrews, the daughter of wealthy banker Alexander Andrews (Walter Connolly). Ellie has married playboy aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas), of whom Alexander disapproves. Alexander spirits Ellie away on his yacht in Florida to talk her into getting an annulment, but she jumps off of the yacht and swims to shore. She gets on a bus to New York to reunite with King (who is only interested in her money). On the bus she meets with Peter Warne, who sees her as his next big scoop. They get into hilarious adventures and fall in love on the way. It has not lost its charm!

1. The beach house is a vacation home. Psycho hubby tells the dr. On the boat near the beginning that he & the wife also live in Boston after the Dr. Says that is where he lives.

2. He probably headed back to Boston after she disappeared to go back to work, and that's why he didn't see the ring for a while.

3. The Dr. Says he's seen Laura staring out the window. Hubby says the Dr. Said she was staring at him. That is *not* what the Dr. Said.

4. Dr. Tells hubby he's been admiring the house, it's the nicest in the area. Hubby asks wife when was the Dr. In the house. Dr. Didn't say he'd been inside the house. I believe #s 3 & 4 were made up in the hubby's twisted mind.

5. Lady from YWCA probably saw the obituary and it said where hubby worked and that's how she knew where to call him.

Excellent beginning to Season Two, which has Joe Mannix (Mike Connors) going solo after leaving Lew Wickersham (Joseph Campanella) and Intertect. He now has Peggy Fair (Gail Fisher) as his loyal secretary and a very cool office with an upstairs apartment (how conveeeenient! - always wanted a place like that!). Starts off with a woman, Jody Wellman (Audree Norton), reading the lips of an assassin (Jason Evers), who is on a payphone telling a man to deliver $40,000 or his wife will be dead. A van comes to pick her up, and you find out that she is an actress with an acting troupe for the deaf. She tells her colleagues and they go to the police, but she can't tell them enough info for them to help. Joe happens to be at the police station and he overhears. He offers his help and they have an exciting adventure avoiding the assassin. The acting is awesome, and it is the first time that a deaf person had a role in a U. S. TV series. A very good advertisement for the National Theater For The Deaf, of which Ms. Norton was a co-founder!

Another reviewer compares this episode (Together, Season 3, Episode 15, first aired January 12, 1958) with another Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode (One More Mile To Go, Season 2, Episode 28, first aired April 7, 1957). But it reminds me more of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode Bad Actor (Season 7, Episode 14, first aired January 9, 1962). In Together, Tony Gould (Joseph Cotten) kills his mistress Shelley when she threatens to tell his wife of their affair if he doesn't leave the wife and marry her. In Bad Actor Bart Collins (Oscar winner Robert Duvall) kills acting rival Jerry Lane (Charles Robinson). But the way they are tripped up at the end with a friend present (this episode Charlie - Sam Buffington, Bad Actor - Marjorie Rogers - Carole Eastman) are similar. Both are really good episodes, but IMO Bad Actor is better (I love William Schallert, and his reaction at the end is memorable).

One of the reviewers asked the question why would Paul Drake (William Hopper) and Della Street (Barbara Hale) go 100 miles from L. A. with Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) to celebrate Della's birthday. Well, I figure the reason is that Perry had an event at his alma mater (100 miles from L. A.) at the same time as Della's birthday, so Paul and Della decided to go along with Perry so they could all still celebrate Della's birthday together. It was a good, clever episode, and Lee Meriwether never looked better. Michael Walker did a good job, he definitely inherited his talent from his parents, Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker.

A few of the other reviewers have questioned why the title of this episode is 'The Deadly'. I believe I have the answer. It is because Phyllis Thaxter's character, Margot Brenner, *killed* Jack Staley (played by a pretty hunky Lee Philips) plans of blackmailing future housewives! Heh heh!

Ms. Thaxter does an excellent job of playing Margot, a woman who is not going to take blackmail lightly. Mr. Philips plays Jack, a smarmy con man very well. Craig Stevens does very well also as Margot's stalwart husband. The other actors also do great jobs with their parts, and I thought it was pretty clever the way Margot got all the ladies together and they turned the tables on Jack. Revenge is sweet!

Anonymous_Maxine wrote: >>>>This is a great way to show what people's true heart's desire may be, and I love the way it makes us think about our own heart's desire. It seems to me that the purpose here is to call attention to how trivial a lot of our desires may be. When offered the opportunity to have anything they want, the people in the show ask for meaningless things like sweaters and pipes.<<<< The neighborhood was very poor, a Skid Row type, so the people did not consider those wants meaningless or trivial. They are not used to having much, so it makes sense that they did not ask for much. That is the way that I see it.

This post is addressing a couple of comments made by other posters:

1. It was not two cops talking near the end, it was a police lieutenant (Joseph V. Perry) talking to a doctor (Michael Fox, mostly known to me as Sally Spectra's (Darlene Conley) tailor @ Spectra Fashions Saul Feinberg on The Bold And The Beautiful and a recurring part as an autopsy doctor/pathologist on Perry Mason) about what happened to Helen Foley (Janice Rule).

2. The reason why the police lieutenant never addressed the subject of arresting Helen Foley (Janice Rule) for killing Peter Selden (Sheppard Strudwick) is that it was obviously self-defense. He was trying to kill her to get rid of the only witness to his killing her mother.

Great acting by Rule, Strudwick, Terry Burnham (an eerily good performance by Terry Burnham as Markie), Perry, Fox, and even Morgan Brittany. This was her acting debut. She was uncredited as the little girl with the doll on the stairs talking to Helen at the very end. She was then known by her real name of Suzanne Cupito.

A couple of the reviewers asked why Mary Schaffner's (Marisa Pavan) mother would call her if her husband wasn't there to answer. The reason is easy: it is because Mary's mom didn't know that Mary's husband, David Schaffner (Lamont Johnson), wouldn't be home. The mom thought that she would be talking to the husband when she called. She had heard about Sam Cobbett's (John Cassavetes) escape (I believe on the radio, may have been that she saw it on TV). When Mary answered the phone and told her that David wasn't there, that he had gone to do some errands, that told her something was wrong because (1) Mary answered the phone and (2) talked with her like she could hear what the mom was saying, she put two and two together and called the police. It was a suspenseful story and all the actors did a great job!

One of the commenters made a comment about how homely the beauty contest winner was. Well, that was the point! This asteroid was where, when rich people died, they were able to have their eternities made into their life's fantasy. The homely woman's dream was to have been able to win a beauty contest, so when she died, she paid for her dream to come true. The men who played the astronauts (Kevin Hagen, Don Dubbins, and Jeff Morrow), all did a good job, but the episode was definitely owned by Cecil Kelloway (as Mr. Wickwire, the robot caretaker of the asteroid). The glint in his eyes made you like him, at least right up to the end (in my view).

OK, Bobby's alive, he's marry Pam, Jenna's out of the picture Ewing-wise. What I don't understand is why Pam would go back to living at Southfork! It would make a lot more sense for Bobby to move in with Pam and Christopher at her mansion (really nice place she has there)! Or, at least Pam could sell her mansion and they could move into another place that would be a fresh start for the three of them. But no, she's going to be back under the oppressive atmosphere of living under the same roof as J. R.! This is a really good episode, though. Cliff is as much of a jerk as ever, taking accolades for Jamie's idea about the tariff(s), and putting her down, saying her idea wouldn't have worked but it was the exact same idea she had told him about . I don't blame her for being fed up with him.

I have *never* underestimated Brian Keith's acting talents! He has always been one of my favorite actors!

Several of the commenters have mentioned the small amount of the extortion/blackmail and how Brian Keith played a low-paid forest ranger. That is true, but don't you think that the extortionists/blackmailers would keep coming back for more? They know that they wouldn't get a lot at a time (but back then, $6,000 was a good chunk of change); however, it would have been an ongoing racket and added up for the bad guys. These guys were not big-time nor big-brained criminals!

Also, the information about the girl's parentage would have been a lot bigger deal back then, but even now the girl's psyche would be affected by this, it would have affected her schooling and grades and the stigma would have stuck on her and affected her friendships (kids can be very cruel). Brian Keith was a good father very understandably wanting to protect his daughter from the trauma of knowing and the rest of the town from finding out and from paying the price of her father's actions.

Jim and Linda were Anne's adoptive parents, *not* stepparents. And, I believe a commenter meant that nobody expected that this episode would be an Emmy-winning (not Oscar-winning) Hitchcock classic, as this was TV and not a movie.

This is a very good episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. One thing that everyone is commenting about is Dabney Coleman's unrecognizableness. The main thing is that he does not have his signature mustache as Tom Esterow, who used to work in the art department of a newspaper. He is now a freelance artist. Still at the newspaper is Gene Barry, who plays John Chambers, who is the advice columnist for 'Ask Uncle George'. John's wife, Louise Chambers, played by Patricia Donahue is having an affair. Their nosy neighbor Mrs. Weatherby, played by Charity Grace, writes to Dear Uncle George asking for advice on whether to tell the husband or not (not knowing that John is Uncle George). John's secretary, Bea, played by Alicia Li, notices that the letter came from George's apartment complex. John realizes that the letter is about Louise. She admits to the affair and gloats to him about it. John kills Louise with a statue of Cupid. Tom came by the apartment and found the body. He said Louise called him to have her portrait made, and she would recommend him to her friends for more commissions for him. He is framed for the murder. John then finds out that his boss, Simon Aldritch, played by John Larkin, is the one who Louise actually had the affair with. Mrs. Weatherby ends up giving the police information they need at the last minute.

I have not seen this movie in a really long time, but I really liked it. I would love to have it on DVD, but it is not available on Amazon or eBay, unfortunately. John Stamos was really believably scary in his part of Nick Pagan. Cynthia Gibb does a typically great job as the title character Alexandra O'Hara. One of my all-time favorites, Ben Gazzara as Papa Pagan is equally as creepy as John Stamos. Bud Bundy himself, David Faustino, is good in his part. There was a lot of great suspense-filled moments and it is awful to think that this based on a true story, the story of Alejandro Henriquez, who was convicted of 3 murders in 1992.

I was less than a month shy of my 15th birthday when this movie came out. I felt bad for Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby), those kids were awful to him and he accidentally kills a little girl Carol Matthews (Angela Hoffman), who is tormenting him (she happens to be the sister of the girl Ronald has an unrequited crush on, Laurie Matthews (Shelley Spurlock) who teases him too. The two girls also have a brother, Duane Matthews (Ted Eccles) who comes into the equation later. Ronald has a *very* close relationship with his mother Elaine Wilby (Kim Hunter, Planet of the Apes, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Edge Of Night). He tells her about what happened and she helps hide him in the house. She goes for an operation and dies in the hospital. The Wood family (Dabney Coleman, Pippa Scott, the real-life Eilbacher sisters Cindy and Lisa and Cindy Fisher) respectively play Mr. & Mrs. Wood and their daughters Althea, Ellen, and Babs move into the house, not knowing Ronald is living in the house. Very good suspense movie! I have thought of this movie over the years and bought it when I found out it was on DVD.

I have to disagree with the posters who called Roger Shackleforth (George Grizzard) shallow. He is a nebbishy little nerd (though not quite at the Wally Cox level) who the ladies have always ignored. He is in love with the beautiful Leila (Patricia Barry), who he realizes is way above his league. J. Pat O'Malley is a man waiting in line for a pay phone while Roger tries calling Leila, whose phone is very busy). Roger finally gets in touch with Leila, but she's pretty brutal in her brush-off. J. Pat gives a business card (of Professor A. Daemon, John McEntire) to Roger, telling him that this man will solve his problem. He gets a love potion from the professor and goes to Leila's with champagne and flowers and sneaks the potion into her champagne. It works. But he learns to be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!

In one of the pictures for the episode of The Case Of The Ill-Fated Faker, there is a beautiful woman who is standing in court. According to the credits on IMDb when you click on the picture it says the woman is Donna Hayes. Ms. Donna Hayes has only 3 credits, and one of them is for Perry Mason, but the credit was for The Case Of The Envious Editor, guest-starring the late, great James Coburn. She is only listed as 'Girl' for that episode, but in the two pictures for The Case Of The Envious Editor that she was in, it looks like the same (uncredited) woman in the picture for The Case Of The Ill-Fated Faker. The man playing the sleazy nephew/supposed murder victim in Ill-Fated Faker is William Campbell, whose first wife was Judith Campbell Exner, ex-lover of John F. Kennedy and mobster Sam Giancana. She was introduced to JFK & Giancana by another of her lovers, Frank Sinatra.