Guilty Witness

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.

When Mr. And Mrs. Crane hear the Verbers having a violent argument in the apartment just above them, and then Mr. Verber disappears the next day, they can't help suspecting the worst.

Solid thriller from beginning to end with a great build up that leads to a whopper of a finale that I didn't see coming. The focus was on whether the wife had really done away with her husband, and when truth was unravelled, the last revelation came right at the tail-end. It's a nifty entry that lends a good insight on 1950's life, the store, domestic and neighbourhood life.

Annoyed by the constant fighting of their next-door neighbors the Verbers Ben and Amelia (Ed Kemmer, Judith Evelyn), grocery story owners Stanley (Joe Mantell) and Dorothy Krane (Kathleen Maguire) become suspicious when they don't see the husband Ben for a few days. After overhearing a detective Sgt. Halloran (Robert F. Simon) say the man might have been murdered, Dorothy gets involved in the deadly case.

I swear I love these little stories, but, some of them defiantly haven't aged well over the years, I mean these were made 60+ years ago and society was a whole lot different back then then it is now. While the concept may have been a little more believable in 1955, its kinda ludicrous now. There's a twist here as usual and while I enjoyed it I'm not sure if I really understand it, Much like another reviewer stated I mean why would one of our main characters (I won't name any names to keep from spoiling anything) literally bring all this suspicion to themselves? I mean they are the one that got this whole thing going and you would think they would want to stay out of it, it order from being found out, who knows maybe I'm just missing the point here. It's still a nicely set up little episode that feels very "Rear Window" like at times, and Hitchcock's narratives with the hanging noise is fun as well. I'm just not sure If the character motivations here really match that of what is revealed in the twist.

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.

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?