User Reviews

Roddy McDowall is supposed to be pretty nasty in this one, especially at the beginning. When he's not robbing a bank or shooting a cop to death, he's slapping his girl friend around.

He makes off with the loot and he and his paramour hole up in a hotel room with more than half a million dollars in unspendable cash. They need to launder it somehow. But one or two scenes suggest that if you must be sequestered in a hotel, there are worse people than girl friend Diane Sayer to be sequestered with. She always wears shorts. Her long legs are alluring and her tiny feet inviting, especially when she has hundred-dollar-bills pinched between her toes. She doesn't mind being tossed around once in a while either, which is an appealing trait.

Not that McDowall gives her much thought. He's worried about figuring out some way to get the stash to someone who will give it legally back to him. I think this is called laundering. I once left a dollar bill in a pair of pants I washed but that's as much as I know about laundering money.

McDowall runs into a senile old lady, Ruth McDevitt, who finds him to be a nice polite boy and more or less adopts him. He calls her "Auntie" and she calls him "Gerald", although she can't spell "Gerald." She's a hoarder too. She has old boxes and piles of magazines strewn around her shabby flat. McDowall and Sayer plant the loot in the pages of McDevitt's years-old magazines, draw up a will for her leaving everything to a church charity -- except the magazines. Then they try to kill her.

I don't think I'll give the ending away except to say that it's a satisfying twist that comes with the crash of cymbals. I had a slight problem with Roddy McDowall as a semi-noir gangster. He's not a murdering sadist. He's the kid in "How Green Was My Valley" who finally throws away his crutches. I had no problem with Diane Sayer. None at all. And as the doddering old lady, McDevitt is as good as they come.

I will start, as I often do, ignoring Hitchcock's stupid comment after the show is over. The lead in always point out the original source material, be it a novel or a short story. I would bet anything that Hitch's disclaimers at the end were never part of the original. In that story, the old lady got the money without any stupid add ons. I like this one, except Roddy McDowell's character was incredibly stupid. To trust that those magazines were never going to be dealt with. Also, the lady suffered from Dementia. And that girlfriend. Neither of them had an ounce of common sense. So it was fun to see her come out on top.

Almost laughable by a fine Hitchock episode where Roddy McDowall kills a night watchman and then flees, only to meet up with a senile elderly woman who has a singing group in the park. The two hit it off and she immediately invites him to her home.

Ruth McDevitt is the senile woman and her performance really gave meaning to dementia.

McDowell plots to leave the stolen money in her apartment, and after a while when he refers to her by Aunt, draw up a will leaving him things so that it appears that the money belonged to the old woman.

This being accomplished, he now sets upon ways to kill the old woman. Being hit by a car and going down a staircase all fail, so he devises one last way.

Of course, McDevitt survives all this, but the ending is quite a surprise. Apparently, Miss Emmy wasn't as senile as we all thought she was.

Well, you had to know which way this one was going to go when Gerald Musgrove (Roddy McDowall) got the bright idea of stashing his hundred grand stolen loot in Emmy Wright's (Ruth McDevitt) stacks and stacks of old magazines. I have to correct a handful of reviewers who stated that Emmy invited Gerald over to her place after becoming friendly at the community sing-a-along. It was Gerald who invited himself over for dinner, the forgetful old woman getting turned around in the conversation until she thought she invited him. Small point, but it goes to Gerald's subterfuge and intent on using the old woman to essentially launder the money he stole. But what a dumb idea, don't you think? Anything could go wrong, and so it did when the Allied Gas repairman (Norman Leavitt) called in a tip to the police that Miss Emmy's gas leak wasn't an accident. But here's the kicker - after retrieving her newly discovered trove of 'frozen assets', Hitchcock comes on to say that the doddering old woman wound up going to prison! Why!!?? There's no way she could have robbed a bank and killed a night watchman! And besides, Gerald and his gal-pal Milly (Diane Sayer) were already arrested for trying to kill her. It would have been best to leave well enough alone and let Miss Emmy enjoy her cold hard cash.

This is a great story about a thief/murderer/con artist that tries to use an unsuspecting, aloof, funny old woman by charming her, befriending her, and even flirting with her so that he can hide his loot that he just killed a guard over, which is $100,000.

He hides the bills in a couple of Emmy's hoarding of magazines, and then persuades her to leave him "just a TOKEN of their friendship" to him, in her will. Assuring her that he doesn't want any of her valuables.

After he has her sign her will, he then tries to set up various ways for her to die by "accident".

The con man, Gerald, even brings in his shallow girlfriend to assist in the murder, which Emmy makes it clear she is jealous and does not like Geralds girlfriend, that he claims is his "cousin".

The girlfriend attempts to help Gerald in turning up the gas on Emmys stove and then leaving to allow the gas to take Emmys life.

But again, the attempt is a fail when Emmy calls the gas company to check her stove, as well as the junk collector that picks up all of her magazines. The gas man calls the cops, after realizing it wasn't an accident.

So, by the time Gerald and his girlfriend return to Emmys home, expecting her death, they are greeted by police instead.

The girlfriend quickly outs Gerald to the police, and Gerald sees the magazines are gone - meaning his money is gone, and he looses his temper and exposes his crimes in front of police.

After the police arrest the two criminals, Emmy goes to her freezer and pulls out the magazines that held the thousands of dollars, and starts counting when we end the story.

Emmy is so colorful, funny, lovable, and animated that she is worth watching this episode, based on her alone.

However, the story is a good reason to watch too.

As usual, Hitchcock has multiple twists and turns through the story, that keep you glued from start to finish.