Alfred Hitchcock Presents

- Season 4

(1958)

Harry Pope is lying in bed and discovers that there is a sleeping snake on his stomach.

Radio warns that a mental patient escaped from a hospital into a severe New Mexico blizzard. At the rail-stop near the sanitarium, a huge, old cowboy boards the train and calms a rattled family with tall tales of the West, as the besieged train grinds to a halt. Totally entranced is the family's young boy, dressed as a gunslinger. Is the patient the old cowpoke ?

Newspaperman Bradley's habit of playing practical jokes puts morgue attendant Pop Henderson in danger of losing his job.

Harry Adams and his wife are driving cross-country through a rural Deep South town when a local speed trap ensnares the young couple. The corrupt redneck police officer, Chandler, arrests them and attempts to extort money from them. The more sophisticated and civilized vacationers from the Big Apple protest their innocence. But the worse they protest, the more the charges, cost & beatings inflicted by Officer Chandler and the entire town of corrupt rednecks becomes. Even Mrs. Adams sincere attempts to mollify the highway robbery patrol doesn't work. How more bad can ...

The fate of accused killer Lloyd Ashley depends on whether or not his lawyer Mark Robeson can prove that a gun can fire accidentally, even with the safety catch on.

In the near future of 1965, a drone seeks escape from his dull job, and his wife's constant demands. Charles Brailing longs to chuck it all and fly down to Rio a la Fred Astaire. Sharing his dilemma with another middle-age crazy hubby, Brailing purchases an answer which should satisfy all parties, even the lovely Lydia - an android duplicate.

Karen Adams' infidelity drives her husband Carl to attempt suicide by jumping from a high window ledge at a hotel. Can police officer Barrett stop him?

A milquetoast gun shop owner witnesses two hoods murdering a witness from another crime in 1927 Chicago and is afraid he will share the same fate.

At a house party, Lucy Pryor allows herself to be hypnotized by Miles Farnham. While under his spell, she claims to be a woman living in 1853 and in the process of describing what she did, picks up a pair of scissors and kills her husband. In looking into the case, the coroner determines that in 1853 a woman did just as Lucy described but is suspicious that this could be a sham. At the inquest, Miles suggests that he hypnotize Lucy, with unexpected consequences.

Blanche Herbert invites Iris Teleton to tea at a posh restaurant. Blanche and Iris' husband Oliver have been having an affair for some time and she now wants Iris to grant her husband a divorce. Iris flatly refuses but it appears that she too once had an affair, a fact that Blanche is obviously prepared to use to her advantage. Iris is determined not to let her husband go free and sets out to ensure that neither he nor his lover ever spend time together again. Little does she realize exactly what her husband is up to.

A killer on the run demands help from two cantankerous Western prospectors, when his car breaks down near their remote shack. The old couple already face eviction unless they can demonstrate that they are homesteading, but in a patch of Nevada desert which can barely support a juniper tree, how can they?

A woman conspires with a classy, mature stage actress, to help kill her live-in uncle for inheritance money.

When wealthy department store owner Barryvale dies, local mortician Art Motherwell anticipates a windfall from a lavish funeral. But the dearly beloved awakens from death to insist the mortician keep expenses to the bare minimum.

A married businessman keeps his naive young mistress in an apartment, assuring her with costly gifts that he will marry her as soon as he can secure a divorce from his harpy wife. The young woman's mother is not so easily persuaded.

A failing mine operation in the Mexican hills had claimed its latest 'victim'; the project's current engineer's had it. Just then, a car pulls up, with two occupants; one's the mine's financier. The other gentleman's an associate of his. With the mine needing only five more weeks of drilling, and the engineer about to quit, the desperate financier has no options, and asks his associate to help make the engineer stay. He will; on one condition. The man's plan? Have the financier drive off, right then, leaving the engineer stuck there...as well as the financier's ...

Miss Fox is a rich old widow who falsely identifies one of the building's employees as the guy who robbed her, and later she wants to help him but it may be too late.

Jan Manning is having serious financial problems. She runs a dress shop but sales are down and she doesn't have her late husband's knack at purchasing, the end result being that she has too much inventory. One of her suppliers, Mel Reeves, has a solution: he needs only to hire someone to break in to the shop through the skylight and set it on fire allowing Jan to collect on her insurance policy. But when the shop burns down, Jan tells the insurance investigator what happened, only to be told that no one broke into the shop but that she is nonetheless responsible for ...

Brad Taylor is a real-estate entrepreneur who is engaged to Janice Wright. Unbeknownst to her, Brad is still seeing an old flame, Leslie Lenox, a writer. Leslie doesn't take to Brad's decision to stop seeing her very well, particularly as she has been paying all of his bills for quite a long time. Leslie makes it very clear that should Brad not drop Janice, she will do everything in her power to ensure he never marries her. Seeing no other way out, Brad decides get rid of Leslie permanently, but is in for a surprise when he gets home to find two detectives waiting for...

A lonely woman who waited years to marry the man she loves finds out a horrible secret about why he stalled for so long.

A jewelry firm casts out the last of a family who've been employees for 117 years, and the company won't hire the last of the line because she's a woman. Faithful service goes unrewarded when her father is given a week to finish up, but he'll show how much he'll be missed by selling the firm's most expensive gem by his last day of 37 years service.

John Manbridge likes the good things in life, including betting on the horses. With no real means of support, he's taken to forging cheques from his cousin Felix Manbridge's account. Aware of this, Felix warns his cousin that should it happen again, he would prosecute--but reminds him that with his own current state of ill-health, John will soon inherit everything. John decides to accelerate the process, not realizing that Felix has decided to do the same, with unintended consequences.

Jocelyn and Mort Barnhardt are married but are also business partners who bicker constantly about who contributes more to the business. One night, their home is broken into and the burglar goes about methodically looking for their valuables. When Mort investigates, he finds a chatty crook who offers him a deal: if they work together, they can get a nice fat insurance settlement in the bargain. Mort doesn't have much that's valuable so he proposes that the burglar kill Jocelyn. It doesn't quite go as planned however.

After a man puts a permanent end to his dominant wife's demands for extravagance, he becomes the victim of blackmail.

Scotland Yard is tasked with ensuring that the recently widowed Lady Gwendolyn Avon doesn't smuggle an expensive necklace known as the "Avon Emeralds" out of England. Most of her late husband's estate was given up in death taxes and the police are sure she could sell them at a premium abroad. Inspector Benson is tasked with ensuring the jewels' safekeeping but when they are stolen from the hotel safe, it appears Lady Avon has a perfect plan.

Thelma Tompkins is a waitress in a hotel restaurant. She's a good waitress and has always been kind to old Mrs. Mannerheim who eats in the restaurant every evening. Thelma is shocked when Mrs. Mannerheim tells her that she is her closest friend and has left her a considerable legacy in her will. In the interim, she gives Thelma a brooch. Over the following months, Mrs. Mannerheim becomes ever more demanding and Thelma's musician boyfriend Arthur suggests that maybe the time has come for the old lady's demise to accelerated somewhat. Thelma poison's her tea but without...

Alexander Gifford has to be the cheapest skinflint on the planet. He chides his wife for leaving a light turned on and he reads his neighbor's newspaper rather than buy his own. When his wife discovers he has bank accounts totaling $33,000 she starts spending money on herself, and he decides he has to do something about it. He tries to hire a "hit man," but recoils when he's told that the fee would be $500. The "hit man" refers him to a chemist to buy poison, but again recoils at the cost. He decides to find a low-cost way to proceed, but even when he's successful, he...

A writer must spend a night in a wax museum's murderers' gallery, to make good a gambling debt knowingly paid with a bad check to a testy Englishman. The museum's owner is so obsessed with the accuracy of his replicas, he's as scary as they are. Especially so to the magazine writer from the U.S., who's already facing deportation or a stretch in a London jail.

Oliver Mathews was once a major movie star, but is now an over-the-hill "has-been" with only limited movie roles and with few fans. He's also being blackmailed by Grace Dolan whose daughter once had an affair with Mathews. He's now broke and decides to get rid of Dolan but finds that his personal assistant Miss Hall, who is infatuated with him, saw him commit the deed. Her price for not going to the police is to make her one dream come true.

A retired detective plans to make a suspect in a murder think he's seeing the victim's ghost on the anniversary of her death in the home she was murdered in. Others are invited to pretend they see nothing, hoping to jar a confession.

When a husband fakes being a victim of a robbery to hide his gambling losses from his pregnant wife, the police still produce a suspect - with unexpected results.

Naomi Shawn is unhappily married. Her husband Arnold, a successful defense attorney, is having an affair with a younger woman and it's apparent that he's no longer interested in her. He also refuses to agree to a divorce, liking the freedom he already has. In court, she sees her husband in action. He is defending a hit-and-run driver and demolishes the prosecution's chief witness by challenging his visual acuity. During the lunch recess, Naomi decides to take action to end her marriage, and fortunately has the correct eye-witness to back her up.

Newspaperman Bill Everett is told by his editor to go to the bar across the street and interview a man who claims to be a Martian. There, Everett meets Howard Wilcox who spins a long tale about how he woke up one morning to find that his fellow Martians had all disappeared. He traveled to Earth and found himself in Wilcox's body. Everett convinces him to go home to his wife and even offers to accompany him. He nearly convinces Wilcox to keep his story to himself, but when he decides to tell his wife the whole story, Everett must take drastic action. All is explained ...

A professor is convinced his boarding housemate (a bank teller) stole $200 from his bank deposit; the teller vehemently denies it. He wants his money back, and employs a series of pranks to challenge the teller's sanity - but to what end?

A nurse claiming she suspects her very rich husband of killing his first wife, seeks advice from a lawyer, instead of going to the police.

Bill Fleming is upset that his wife is having an affair with Philip Baxter, the most recent of a long line of lovers. Bill is an ex-boxer and an outdoors man and nothing would give him more pleasure than to wring Baxter's neck. When he mentions to his fishing pal that he has a large collection of dueling weapons, his buddy suggests that he challenge Baxter to a duel. He tells Bill that under California law, you get special treatment in the courts if you kill someone in a duel. Little does Bill realize that his fishing pal had a purpose in giving Bill the advice he did.

A scaffold falls on a new bride, after her husband accuses her of rendezvousing with an old flame. Another former suitor suspects the husband faked the accident, and urges her to cut off the affair. When she persists, he fears the unbalanced husband will again try to kill her, so he devises a plan to protect her.