"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour"
Run for Doom (1963)

Director:

Bernard Girard

Writers:

James Bridges (teleplay)
Henry Kane (novel)

TV Series:

"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" (1962)

Original Air Date:

17 May 1963 (Season 1, Episode 31)

Genre:

Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

"Our love affair was too hot" coos lounge singer Nickie, heating up quickly when young Dr. Reed beckons her to his table...

Plot Keywords:

Character Name In Title

Cast

Alfred Hitchcock	...	Himself - Host
John Gavin	...	Dr. Don Reed
Diana Dors	...	Nickie
Scott Brady	...	Bill Floyd
Carl Benton Reid	...	Horace Reed
Tom Skerritt	...	Dr. Frank Farmer
Lew Brown	...	David Carson
Robert Carson	...	Mulloy
Gail Bonney	...	Sarah
Jackie Russell	...	Waitress
Jon Shepodd	...	Curtis Cane
Barry Cahill	...	Chief Petty Officer
Patricia Crest	...	Teller (as Patricia Krest)
Audrey Swanson	...	Nurse
Cathie Taylor	...	Singer

Certification:

USA:TV-PG

The Culprit

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

A jazz musician's flighty mistress has started seeing a young doctor on the side. She's played by very blonde Diana Dors, so as Scott Brady drinks and smokes in her absence, he stares at a Barbie doll on the table before him.

She's the singer in front of his trio (guitar, bass, him on piano). The doctor is knocked out by the floor show, on their honeymoon she takes up with an Army lieutenant. A fight between the two men leaves the husband a murderer, and the soldier a man overboard at night.

The doctor's father having keeled over at their engagement, an inheritance makes the couple rich. She closes the bank account and dumps him, but the jazz musician strangles her. Thinking she's dead, the doctor retrieves his money from her suitcase, but she wakens and demands it. He finishes the job, the police downstairs with a confessed culprit are only waiting to question the girl.

The resemblance to Losey's Accident is structural and not superficial, lending great force to the final shot of John Gavin's face moving into frame oddly shadowed in anguish.

The jazz numbers are very well done ("Just One of Those Things", "How Long Has This Been Going On?"). Brady in sunglasses at an upright acts the part. Dors and Gavin give brilliant performances. Girard's shipboard murder scene suddenly achieves a very realistic effect with a view over the railing after a shifting tussle. Dors and Brady go at it similarly in a fight all over the doctor's house.