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Today, Professor Hitchcock gives us lessons in how to dispose of a dead body, and when not to use a corpse to make a point
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "The Cadaver"
OB: January 17, 1964, 10 p.m. EST, CBS
I was three days old when this episode was originally broadcast.
It figures. I'm writing about Alfred Hitchcock's TV show and I already managed to get no further than a couple of episode guides and a vintage TV listing before finding a plot twist of my own.
"The Cadaver" episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour is supposedly Season 2, Episode 9, originally broadcast November 29, 1963. That's according to several episode guides, including the one at IMdB. But I found out otherwise: it was apparently broadcast for the first time much later than that...January 17, 1964, the week I was born, to be exact. I discovered this by accident, while checking the TV Guide for that week.
"Postponed from an earlier date" suggests there may, in true Hitchcock fashion, be a macabre reason for the delay: I think it's possibly a ripple effect of the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps it was the subject matter, or perhaps it was pre-empted by something else that was pre-empted a week earlier, by the assassination coverage.
In any event, this is the episode that was broadcast the week I was born, and it's a good representation of what the producers, directors and writers, and Hitchcock himself, may have been going for each week. And it features one of Quentin Tarantino's "regulars," so what's not to love?
It was known as Alfred Hitchcock Presents when it premiered in 1955 on CBS, and for the next seven years, presented half-hour dramas of people making choices--usually very bad ones--and spending much of the half hour being haunted by them. The dramas, a few directed by the legendary auteur himself, themselves became legendary. You could almost get attention at a party just by reciting the plots. ("Remember the time Barbara Bel Geddes beat her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, then cooked and fed the murder weapon to the cops? Or the time that cop was trying to talk the guy off the ledge because the guy's wife, Elizabeth Montgomery, dumped him for another man...and that other man turned out to be the cop? Or that time the disturbed magician's assistant decided to saw the lady in half for real? Or that time Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre made that bet about the lighter--either McQueen gets Lorre's car, or Lorre cuts off one of McQueen's fingers?")
During those years, as grisly as the plots could be, it was often the show's sponsors that did the censoring. Bristol Myers, makers of Bufferin and Excedrin, didn't like seeing people killed by mixed up pills, for instance, and Lincoln-Mercury didn't want any of their cars used as murder weapons. It was the sponsors' idea that if a perpetrator is seen "getting away with it" in the teleplay, Hitchcock mentions in his epilogue that the long arm of the law took care of them, if Karma didn't. The aforementioned "woman being sawed in half" episode, however, was refused by CBS after it was filmed and never aired on network television. It was only seen when the show went into syndication.
Hitchcock went along with their demands but it wasn't unusual for him to needle the sponsors in his wraparounds. "My story is about a man called Perry. It begins after a moment called tedious," he began one show.
And all during this time, the master of suspense continued making his legendary movies while filming the dark-humored introductions to each episode, and directing 17 episodes himself. "Vertigo," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "North By Northwest," "Psycho," "The Birds" and "Marnie" were among the Hitchcock classics that came out during the run of the TV show. "Psycho" even used the same crew as the series, in fact, in an effort to save Universal some money. It also cost Hitchcock the use of Disneyland as a filming location for some unnamed project in the early 1960s (possibly even his TV series), because Walt Disney was so infuriated with it. (Disney lost both parents while still young.)
After six years on CBS, the show began the "network two-step," jumping back and forth. In 1961 it switched from CBS to NBC for its last half hour season. Then in 1962, the show expanded to a full hour and was retitled The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, moving back to CBS in the process. It moved to NBC for its final season. The Alfred Hitchcock Hour was always treated by everyone, including the Internet Movie Database, as a separate series, despite its being a continuation of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
And Hitchcock's hour long show managed to top The Twilight Zone in one respect: without the use of otherworldly, unexplained phenomena, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour did a much better job...of filling up an hour. No repeated scenes or padded dialogue, if anything the suspenseful journey was even more nerve-wracking when it took longer and made a few twists and turns along the way. (The Twilight Zone only experimented with the hour-long format for a half season, late winter/spring of 1963.)
During this era, one episode, "The Jar," had Pat Buttram (Mr. Haney from Green Acres) buying a jar containing something bizarre--a former being of some sort?--from a circus sideshow and showing it off in his home. It had a horrifying ending, and a rare, heartbreaking, dramatic monologue from George Lindsey, who would later play Goober on The Andy Griffith Show. "How to Get Rid of Your Wife" finds Bob Newhart, then a hot young standup comic, in a rare role as a man plotting to kill his wife so he can run off with a stripper. In "Beyond the Sea of Death," actress Diana Hyland plays a woman who gets word her new husband has died in a South American mine explosion, so she tries to contact him through a medium. There's a shocking ending that has nothing to do with the mystic himself. And Edd "Kookie" Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip plays a prisoner in a 1920s hard labor camp with a tendency toward escape, a bully of a warden, and a new plan involving a coffin, in "Final Escape."
The week I was born, Hitchcock opened the postponed episode, "The Cadaver," by standing in front of an ivy covered wall. He's joking about the fact that new colleges are springing up everywhere, but people want to go to older ones. So he's started a new one that has fast-growing ivy (seen at the very top of this page, taking him over). He pitches to the first commercial break by saying, "The school bell rings in one minute, and when it does, remember...it tolls for thee."
When it returns, a college professor is lecturing his class on the human anatomy. His aide rolls in what we're led to believe is a human cadaver, one of several the class will dissect. Instead, what's under the sheet rises up--it's renowned college prankster and drunk (and star halfback) Skip Baxter. He's played by Michael Parks--future star of Then Came Bronson, regular on Twin Peaks, and has a recurring role as Texas Ranger Earl McGraw in several Quentin Tarantino films, and as other characters in some of Tarantino's other films. The aide who brought him in happens to be his roommate, "Doc" Carroll, played by Joby Baker.
That night, a drunken Skip brings in a woman he's been dating, Carol, who's slung over his shoulder and screaming. He takes her through the boys' dorm and throws her in the shower, fully clothed, as he laughs maniacally. The next morning he finds himself tied to his bed--Doc's handiwork, lest he get into any more trouble than he already has. "I feel like somebody's in my head, with kleats, kicking field goals...Did I kill anybody?" Skip asks. It turns out Skip got a "black mark" (re:summons to the dean) because someone reported the shower prank to the floor monitor. And Carol pretty much doesn't want to speak to him again, which rules out taking her to the Halloween carnival.
That night, in a scene that definitely raised my eyebrows, Skip gets to pelt Doc in the face with a pie, at the Halloween carnival's "Push a Pie in the Face of an Honor Student" booth. ("Your dreams come true!" boasts a banner, at an attraction that would probably never go up today without controversy, as we've become more sensitive to bullying.)
Afterwards, everyone heads to a nearby nightspot where Skip, having tied one on (trying to break the "most beers at one time record," another eyebrow-raiser in the era of alcohol poisoning consciousness), is giving piggy back rides to Ruby the hot blonde waitress. After Skip passes out, and a friend in drag takes off his blonde wig and earrings, Doc gets a drastic idea: he's going to put a cadaver in the bed next to Skip.
Skip, still in his gladiator costume from the night before, is told he strangled Ruby in rage. As usual, Skip remembers none of it. Doc instructs him to "not leave the room" until he gets back, and expects to cut away from class around 8:30 to tell him what to do next.
What Doc wasn't counting on was being held up by the professor, who decided he'd need his services after all as he did two lectures back to back instead of the one he planned. This is where everything starts to go straight to hell.
The tropes that would normally go with a funny game of "hide the girl in the boys' dorm" on a sitcom or in a teen movie, are suddenly being used to build suspense. First Skip has to divert two residence advisors who are there to perform a room check; he begs off, saying he's still cleaning it, and they agree to come back but warn him about a messy room. Then the football team's representative, Ed Blair, comes by to give Skip a talk about letting down the team. He has a talk scheduled that afternoon with the coach, in what appears to be a "last chance." There are some suspenseful moments as the closet door (where the body is now hidden) comes into play a couple of times.
A couple of interesting notes here: first, the team rep, Ed, is played by Rafer Johnson, U.S. gold medalist in the decathlon in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. Second, and Johnson has a role here too, is the fact this show has a refreshingly diverse cast, considering it's 1964. This many people of color in a show's cast was rare for that year or even for this series.
When Doc finally returns to the dorm, Skip has left, and so has the body, and the rug Skip uses to wrap it up. He only finds a loose earring on the floor. Hitchcock, now covered with more ivy, tells us, "We hope to break this case shortly, but first we must break our stations."
This might be a good place to tune out if don't want to be spoiled by a 50 year old TV show. Go look it up on Youtube if you like. I'll wait.
Skip, now convinced he's a murderer, is starting to act like one. He's now decided his next course of action is the main trope for this episode: what to do with the body. For awhile he's driving around aimlessly in his '57 Chevy Bel Air convertible, with the top down, and the body rolled up in a rug in the back seat. He bumps into a garbage can being brought out to the curb by the blabby Mrs. Fister, who invites him in for a drink, and tells him he can park his car in her garage.
This is the turning point of the episode, the plot twist, and it's very well written and well acted. Mrs. Fister is played by veteran character actress Ruth McDevitt, an older woman (her character claims to be 67 in this episode) whose acting resume includes a cult show a number of my friends love and remember well, Darren McGavin's The Night Stalker in the mid 1970s. Her very long resume of TV shows ranges from Mister Peepers to The Streets of San Francisco.
It's a one-sided conversation, as Mrs. Fister is apparently in stream of consciousness mode, telling Skip just about everything she knows about her neighbors, her late husband, and her love of "neat gin." Parks doesn't get to say much in this extended scene, but he does get to act...a lot. His facial expressions try to help us keep up with the suddenly numerous moving parts in his head, what he's being reminded of, what he's considering, what he fears, how he takes in the numerous triggers in Mrs. Fister's unending monologue. She shows off her late husband's power saw, discusses a neighbor's cat problem, then says, "Mrs. Peterson poisoned six of (the cats), made Mr. Johnson so mad he had the police on her. I kept out of it. I went to their funeral, though..." (she takes a big drink, reaction shot from Skip) "He buried them in the back yard under the old incinerator. Remember how we used to be able to burn things? Leaves, in the fall of the year, that wonderful smell."
The dialogue in that scene is excellent, chock full of morbid, ironic undertones her character doesn't even realize. It would make modern day filmmakers like Tarantino and the Coen brothers proud. She also asks about Skip's rug, shows off the Persian rug she has hanging on a nearby wall, then says "I just love magical carpets filled with mystery."
She then goes to call a neighbor about the pending garbage pickup and how you have to wrap it now (she keeps getting back to that, like it's the number one thing on her mind). That's when she says, "Yes, wrap it...oh, with newspapers or sacks or anything, I just use the bags I bring home from the store. Then they throw it into that big machine before we get up in the morning, and it's all ground to a pulp before it even gets halfway down the street!"
The quick zoom to Parks' reaction to the "ground to a pulp" line, is memorable.
A quick cut to Doc looking for Skip, and asking Ruby to call him if she sees Skip. (Ruby still has a thing for Skip and is hinting she's kind of into Doc, too.) Then back to Mrs. Fister's house, where she retells the story about the neighbor who forgot to wrap their garbage last week, only this time admits it's her...then she passes out. Skip then heads out to the garage, where the rug, the cadaver, and the power tools are all located, and gets busy.
The next morning, Skip watches as the garbage man takes away several wrapped packages--some long, one kind of ball-shaped--from Mrs. Fister's home, then tells her he has to get to class and leaves. (She had made breakfast for him--a chicken liver omelette, which she said was her specialty. Skip took a pass.) He returns to campus in time for more bad news and gruesome reminders: Ed, and the team manager, are taking Skip's equipment back into inventory, showing that he's been cut from the team.
But the way the equipment is being called out..."one set of shoulder pads," "one set of thigh pads," as each one is thrown into a barrel that looks like a garbage can, clearly appears to be driving Skip further into madness. Then the helmet falls to the floor, reminding Skip of another decapitated body part he saw recently.
Skip finds himself back at the bar and grill, or as he is by now thinking of it, the scene of the crime. He's shocked to suddenly find himself face to face with Ruby, and suddenly starts mono-tonally saying her name over and over. Ruby is still, and will remain, blissfully unaware of her own bizarre, pivotal role in this plot. Then Doc comes to explain everything about the cadaver, and why it was used.
"It wasn't Ruby, now where is it?"
"How could it not be anyone?.."I never even looked at her face, not even in the garage I couldn't. I couldn't look at her face."
When Doc asks how he's going to replace the cadaver, Skip says "Come here, I'll show you," and takes him by the hand, leading him away, as Ruby says "Goodbye babies" one last time to them.
As the medical students get ready for the dissection, one of them opens locker #8, then chide Doc for his prank. The professor then threatens to report him, but instead lifts him up...to find Doc is dead, still in the clothes we last saw him wearing, as Skip starts laughing maniacally nearby, next to a skeleton. The final shot zooms in on the skeleton's skull as Skip keeps laughing. The skeleton represents Skip being just as dead inside as Doc now is all over. Doc hoped to shock Skip into sobriety by "scaring" him "straight," but instead he pushed Skip much further into the dark recesses of desperation. The transition was complete: Doc had turned Skip into a murderer.
Hitchcock appears one last time as his own twin brother, with a mustache (a running gag in his wraparound segments). The "real" Hitch has presumably disappeared under the ivy, and his brother, holding a water can, complains about not being able to hold onto good staff members. He also says Skip will be spending a considerable amount of time in an "institution" that's not of the "higher learning" variety.
Hitchcock didn't direct this episode (Swedish-born Alf Kjellin did) but it has his subtle touches all over it: the references to body parts, the reaction shots, etc. This episode seems to get mixed reviews from people who've seen it; some say the extended sequence with Mrs. Fister dragged down the show, Parks isn't given enough to do, etc. But I found it to be a well written piece of tragedy, about how desperate some people become when they're already convinced they've reached the dark side and have nothing left to lose and nowhere else to go.
This was a hallmark of Hitchcock's work on television--The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits wanted to teach us a lesson, while Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour were pretty content with scaring the hell out of us. In fact, I could argue, his TV series, with his name, image, and smartass remarks, was actually a lot darker than his movies when you think about it..."Vertigo" and "Psycho" are closest to the spirit of his TV show. But what these TV dramas did do for ten years was create a suspenseful atmosphere, the kind of show we can only watch through our fingers, waiting for that dreadful thing coming around the pike to finally happen, knowing full well it's to someone who may or may not have it coming.
Availability: The Alfred Hitchcock Hour is mostly available on Youtube, which is where I found this episode.
Next time on this channel: The Outer Limits.
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