Hitchcock always manages to tap into our nightmares. Here, Hitch plays out the well known tragedy where a child gets his hands on a gun.
A young boy's Uncle is visiting and tells the boy he's brought a special gift for him from Africa.
You see the boy go up to his Uncle's room, open his suitcase and take out the gun, which of course looks cooler than the toy gun he's always playing with. He also finds the bullets and loads 2 or 3 into the revolver, then puts the revolver into the toy western holster he's always wearing. Since everyone's used to seeing the boy playing with his toy gun and holster, no one notices that it's a real gun when the boy goes out to play.
Because the boy didn't fully load the revolver, Hitchcock creates more tension of the Russian Roulette kind. The boy actually pantomimes pointing the gun at someone and pulls the trigger on a empty chamber a couple of times.
While the boy is out wandering around, play acting like a cowboy, the parents and Uncle figure out what's happened and frantically call around town to locate the boy. There's a very effective scene in the supermarket where the boy's name is called out through the public address system at the very moment he's standing next to the coffee grinder and a customer grinds coffee.
No one in town is aware of how dangerous the boy is.
This excellent episode is unlike the others in the series since there is no ironic black comedy twist at the end. It's a miniature Hitchock movie where the viewer knows something awful is going to happen unless the characters can stop it in time.
A young boy's Uncle is visiting and tells the boy he's brought a special gift for him from Africa.
You see the boy go up to his Uncle's room, open his suitcase and take out the gun, which of course looks cooler than the toy gun he's always playing with. He also finds the bullets and loads 2 or 3 into the revolver, then puts the revolver into the toy western holster he's always wearing. Since everyone's used to seeing the boy playing with his toy gun and holster, no one notices that it's a real gun when the boy goes out to play.
Because the boy didn't fully load the revolver, Hitchcock creates more tension of the Russian Roulette kind. The boy actually pantomimes pointing the gun at someone and pulls the trigger on a empty chamber a couple of times.
While the boy is out wandering around, play acting like a cowboy, the parents and Uncle figure out what's happened and frantically call around town to locate the boy. There's a very effective scene in the supermarket where the boy's name is called out through the public address system at the very moment he's standing next to the coffee grinder and a customer grinds coffee.
No one in town is aware of how dangerous the boy is.
This excellent episode is unlike the others in the series since there is no ironic black comedy twist at the end. It's a miniature Hitchock movie where the viewer knows something awful is going to happen unless the characters can stop it in time.