Guilty Witness

Yes, folks, another excellent and unusual plot about which the end is the most impressive. The ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS series trademark. The basic scheme, plot, is not that new, of course, but it is riveting for the audiences. The disappearance of someone, a missing person is enough to rivet you, especially in such an anthology show. And it propoes characters in whom many folks could recognize themselves. And maybe those same folks will not see their neighbours the same way after watching this episode. I recommend this episode, it is a pretty good one. There had been far worse in this anthology show, believe me.

This is a pretty pedestrian crime drama. It's about the frantic wife who hears a lot of violence going on in the upstairs apartment. He husband tells her to mind her own business, but then he becomes involved himself. The key to the whole thing is finding how a body would be disposed of. To modern viewers, this is a bit far fetched; at the time it was done, it was probably more believable, especially to a male dominated society (more male that is). Anyway, I believe this eventually evolves into a story about a person who is delusional. The acting is pretty believable. The final moment is pregnant with possibilities but the question is, "Why would someone bring suspicion to herself?" Or am I missing something?

I won't say much about this show since I do not want to give anything away. All I will say is it is that the running time of the play is close to 22 minutes (taking out two minutes for Hitchcock's beginning and ending) and for most of the 22 minutes the play was a routine situation that has been played out many times on TV, movies and live plays. What makes this different and memorable from the rest is the last fifteen seconds of the play. Again, I did not see it coming.-- Nice watch since is something I will remember for a long time.

I won't recap the story. Enough people have already done that.

My question was at the ending. Was Mrs.

Verber telling the truth, or was she merely hurling accusations? It was not clear-cut to me, especially given that the woman was an emotional and mental mess. And Mrs. Krane's reaction was not a great tell, either. I was asking myself if I had the ending all wrong. It was one time when the "surprise" ending really was a surprise for me, but only because I didn't get it. My partner said it was clear to him, so maybe I am just being dense on this one. I kept saying, "Is it really what Mrs.

Verber is saying it is, or is she a drunken paranoid spouting off?"

I may have to watch again, which I rarely have to do with Hitchcock.

I'll start with my thoughts on one of those points and then get to the meat of the episode.

Death smells. I remember one year an animal died up under the bathroom and the odor definitely wasn't pleasant. That's something up under the house, I can't imagine a body (especially something as large as a human) stinking up a place for very long before somebody notices a corpse around.

This episode centers on two couples. One couple (the Verbers) is quite dysfunctional and sadly children are involved. They're all the time getting into arguments, I'd say it was equal footing in terms of both of them smacking each other around.

The other couple are the Cranes. Mr. Crane runs the grocery store. Mr. Crane is a nice man but he also knows when to mind his own business. He realizes what he needs to do/not do when it concerns getting involved with anybody's business. He even cautions his wife about his attitude and loses his temper because Mrs. Crane is the opposite of Mr. Crane. She's all the time nosing about the Verbers business. I like how the episode plays out in some ways because you truly want to write Mrs. Crane off as just being a 'Gladys Kravitz' sort of character. She's got a nose problem and that's all there is to it. Nope, there's a lot more than that.

So much attention is being drawn that a cop comes around to investigate the whereabouts of Mr. Verber. Mr. Verber ends up being dead, killed by his wife. Mrs. Verber comes down the stairs and she confesses she was afraid of the cop. The cop wasn't going around telling who he was. He claimed to be a building inspector in order to search the premises. Mrs. Verber complains about her husband but then she pulls out a wild card over what Mr. Verber was about to do. He was about to leave her and go off with Mrs. Crane (!) The two ladies get into a cat fight as the camera pans over Mr. Crane looking like he's in a complete daze over the reveal that just happened.

This is an interesting episode but I question that twist ending. Would you really leave a steady and reliable husband to go off with somebody that's a womanizer and smacks his wife around? Really? I realize people might have their own tales to tell so perhaps I'm just being naive saying the above comment. Either way, it's still an excellent episode.