"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour"
Day of Reckoning (1962)

Director:

Jerry Hopper

Writers:

John Garden (novel)
Richard Levinson (writer)

TV Series:

"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" (1962)

Original Air Date:

22 November 1962 (Season 1, Episode 10)

Genre:

Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

An unfaithful wife taunts her husband that she's ditching him for a real man. As the drunken couple argue on the stern of a yacht...

Plot Keywords:

Character Name In Title

Cast

Alfred Hitchcock	...	Himself - Host
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Claude Akins	...	Sheriff Jordan
Katharine Bard	...	Caroline Sampson
Dee Hartford	...	Felicity Sampson
Louis Hayward	...	Judge David Wilcox
Hugh Marlowe
Jeremy Slate	...	Tent Parker
K.T. Stevens
Barry Sullivan	...	Paul Sampson

Certification:

USA:TV-PG

A sense of guilt

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

It's almost like an Ibsen play, but it's set on a motor yacht for the murder during a riparian card party. The wife on the afterdeck announces that she's leaving the husband for another man, he grapples with her and she is flung overboard. They've been drinking, she can't swim, in a few seconds she's out of view as he stares in a slow realization of his victory. Hopper sets this up with moonlight, the wife setting the automatic pilot and admiring the scene and one-second shots deploying her in the water, then puts the camera on Barry Sullivan in a medium shot for his long take.

The casting is unusually broad and deep so as to provide a solid weight for what follows. After the husband artfully covers his tracks by returning to the cabin below while the yacht continues on and eventually goes aground, the wife is thought to have fallen over the side, a search is made and there is an official investigation. The husband's insane jealousy carries him through this, he's trying to find the other man, perhaps the golf pro who's been their houseguest, no, it's the judge who tells investigators he saw it all from the cabin, no harm was done by the husband to the wife during their conversation. The judge isn't under oath and couldn't see anything, but he doesn't want to allow a man he takes to be innocent to suffer needlessly a routine police interrogation.

At length, the husband resolves to confess his crime. He tells his family and friends, but they won't hear of it. He's suffering delusions brought on by grief and a misplaced sense of guilt. They have a reputation to uphold and a standing in the community which he would jeopardize by going to the police with such a story, they tell him.

He escapes from their constant attentions and makes a confession to the authorities, who disbelieve him. He is committed by his family and friends to a mental asylum.

Under Hopper's direction, Sullivan reveals or fabricates in moments of stress a style founded on Humphrey Bogart which is fascinating to watch. The cast includes Claude Akins, Dee Hartford, Hugh Marlowe, Katharine Bard, Jeremy Slate and Louis Hayward.