Lonely Place

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.

A couple of weeks ago caught an episode on a classic rerun station of this classic series "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" from the 1960's. This episode called "Lonely Place" from 1964 from season 3 starred the great and good character actor Bern Dern. The tale is good with suspense even with a creep like feel of mystery and in the end it shocks a little with a surprise twist ending! Dern is Jesse a drifter a man who's lonely as he just lives from pillow to post one day he arrives in a valley on a farm of a couple named Stella(Teresa Wright)and Emery(Pat Buttram)and oh Jesse is looking for work he needs it even if it's only the 5 or 6 dollars a day that he's paid! Soon little by little it's seen at the dinner table that the manners of Jesse is strange and different it's clear that evil lies beneath as on the side Jesse starts to kill pets on the farm! And Jesse has an eye out for Stella the farmer wife it's like the attraction is like in a sexual psycho way! And beat it all Emery the husband is fooled and to weak and really a coward of a husband to say anything to protect his wife! Only in the end a woman scorned and she will take matters into her own hands as this farm lady deals with both guys her own way as it's a goodbye to both the husband and evil drifter! Overall good episode with suspense and it has a surprise twist ending!

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.

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.

The story is both terrifying and heart wrenching. After her pet is pointlessly killed, you can't help but empathize with Stella and seeing what her cowardly husband and psycho farm had put her through is agonizing. If this were shown in a theater, I suspect there would be spontaneous applause at the ending twist.