Lonely Place

No wonder this entry has drawn more reviews than average. It's a suspenseful chiller that also manages to inject meaningful drama. Stella and Emery (Wright & Buttram) are hardscabble peach farmers out in the middle of nowhere. Her only relief from dawn to dusk drudgery is a pet squirrel, while he cares only about his peaches (never realizing that his wife's a "peach"). Then one day a drifter Jesse (Dern) appears, and is willing to work hard at harvesting for only $3-per day. Trouble is he's got several screws loose as Stella soon finds out. But just how loony is he, and how will things play out between the three on this isolated scrap of land.

It's an uncommonly well acted hour. Kudoes to the producers for realizing that there was more to Buttram than Gene Autry's clownish sidekick, most notably in The Jar (1964). Here his pudgy adding machine is just right. It's still early in Dern's career and he's making his chops with sinister roles like this. No telling what his leering Jesse is capable of, as Stella fears. It's also an extremely deglamorized Wright, befitting a neglected household drudge. Hard to see any of her 1940's ingénue sparkle here, and appropriately so.

Often the best Hitchcocks get us to see the sometimes gap between justice and law. That's because Hitch splits his wrap-up from the on-screen ending. That way his wrap-up can comply with TV's Standards and Practices requiring triumphant endings. On the other hand, the on-screen ending can now be unpredictable in contrast to the wrap-up, as in the shattering The Unlocked Window (1965). Happily, this same concession to reality is on display here. As Lonely Place suggests, there can be a clear tension between poetic justice and what the law requires.

No waste of words in this episode. Everything built to a climax that we nearly couldn't watch. Horror cinema at its delicate finest.

Vintage movies present Teresa Wright mostly as an innocent youngster. And it starts similarly here. Bruce Dern showing acting chops and big dingy choppers as he eats and...

Pat Buttram cannot be ignored here. Interestingly, he performs in two of my favorite episodes in this series. The other being "The Jar", which is a must watch.

But "The Jar" is fantasy, this episode could be non fiction.

Teresa Wright is best remembered for starring in Hitchcock's classic ''Shadow Of A Doubt'' and here again some twenty years later the home and family are not the safe place they seemed. The middle aged Teresa Wright in this case is a country wife immediately frightened by the deeply repugnant nature of the hired hand played by Bruce Dern (later to be directed by Hitch in ''Family Plot'').

Certainly not for squirrel lovers this is a serious and harrowing psychological episode. Not the usual depiction of a husband (played by Pat Buttram) in relation to a wife. Hitchcock's epilogue may come as unwelcome as twenty-first century sympathies may not accord with the television required moral standards of the time.

Once again Hitchcock cottoned to the network censors and threw in his crime doesn't pay crap. If you want to enjoy all these Hitchcock tales, don't bother watching him; get right to the play itself. This one is really good. It involves a long suffering woman and her fat, insensitive husband. She does everything for him and all he can do is blame and complain. Enter Bruce Dern, about as nutty as anything he has ever done. He is psychotic. I know we throw that term around a lot, but this is really a fact. He taunts and threatens the poor woman. He kills a pet of hers without provocation. He makes sexual advances and has a hunting knife he shows around. Pat Buttram, the old Western sidekick is the husband. Both men do a great job portraying the scum of the earth.

Has got to be good!!! One of the very best character actors, and a Hitchcock favorite, for good reason! Dern was lead character in Alfred Hitchcock's final film, "Family Plot", and as usual, Bruce Dern played his role perfectly.