Don't Come Back Alive

They couldn't wait a month, they decided to hatch this plan where it would take seven years? I mean sure you get that lump sum then, but if there's much better job is coming their way in just 30 short days, they should've just rode that out.

Frank Partridge (Sidney Blackmer) and his wife plot to cheat their life insurance company by having her hide out for seven years and declared legally dead, but an investigator believes Mr. Partridge has murdered her.

If the downfalls of this episode could be summed up briefly, I think they tried to fit too much into 25 minutes. As far-fetched as the plot may be, it would make a decent movie, but you have to develop it a bit more. It is not as simple as just moving away... I suspect unless the wife got a whole new identity, they would be able to find her sooner or later...

But, as far as a short story goes, it is alright. If we suspend our disbelief for a bit, it has a nice arc, and there is always the "comeuppance" that makes this show, "Twilight Zone" or even "Tales From the Crypt" so appealing.

An older couple, Frank and Mildred (Sidney Blackmer and Virginia Gregg) are in a financial bind and they've come to realize that they'll have nothing when it comes to retirement. So, they devise a stupid plan...to have Mildred go to another place and assume a new identity. Then, Frank will report her missing and, if all goes well, he can have her declared dead after seven years declare her dead...and collect on her insurance policy. But there's a problem with this...the insurance investigator (Robert Emhardt) is determined to prove that Frank killed his wife!

While this is an interesting episode, the logistics of this plan are pretty crazy. Plus, although the couple is supposed to be poor, they spend to create two households and he periodically flies off to meet her...and that cannot be cheap! Plus, they keep calling each other....and you'd think this would create a phone record trail. So, it's interesting....though not altogether believable. Plus, if the couple love each other as much as they claim, you wonder HOW such a plan could possibly succeed.

Overall, this is just an okay episode. While the ending is enjoyable the entire scheme just seemed crazy and improbable beyond belief. Not terrible but also not all that good either.

An interesting story about fraud and love and money. That was very intriguing from the start and we wondering what will happened until the end. They put a time limit (7 years) and we wondering if they will get caught in the process or if they will succeed to do it but some others events will make the whole thing more difficult to hide the truth.

Nothing remarkable here, just patented Hitchcock programming. Blackmer and Gregg are a penniless middle-aged couple who can't come up with rent money. They're obviously respectable and deeply attached to one another. But where to get the needed money. At this point Hitchcock takes over. They concoct an insurance scam, where she will disappear for seven years after which she will be declared legally dead, and then they can collect a fat insurance settlement. Gregg balks because she fears seven years of independence after decades as a dowdy housewife. But then they are desperate. What mastermind Blackmer hasn't counted on, however, is dogged insurance investigator Emhardt or his mousy wife.

The contest of wills between the wily Emhardt, who suspects murder, and the resolute Blackmer makes an interesting contrast. The series wisely used Emhardt in key roles over the years, -even today; that combination of baby-faced menace in a middle-aged man remains truly distinctive. Gregg's role is the demanding one since she has to carry the episode's irony, but then she was one of the great TV actresses of the day. The Hitchcock stamp emerges in showing how larceny lurks beneath even the most ordinary looking people, and, of course, in the twist ending which strikes me, nonetheless, as not very plausible. Couldn't a more plausible motivation for gardening have been concocted.

Of course, subjecting the entire screenplay to logical analysis turns up gaps that admittedly could have been improved upon even in a 30-minute format. But that misses the point, which is the insistent Hitchcockian one- that crime turns up in the unlikeliest places. Add to that the subversive note about the hidden potential of even the most dependent housewife, and you have an interesting allegory (not an essay, which would require filling in the gaps) on middle-class respectability, -a frequent Hitchcock target, especially appropriate to the conformist 1950's. No, this is not unblemished Hitchcock, but neither is it a wash-out.