Contrived is the word for this one.
A married businessman and his married mistress are dining and dancing the night away, while debating some troublesome issue that will be forever unknown, partly because the latter's voice does not register clearly, and partly because the recording has weathered badly across sixty years.
But their disagreement seems to have been resolved, perhaps with the aid of the demon alcohol, by the time he drives her home, even canoodling with her at the wheel. Of course, the inevitable happens, and they find they've run over and killed a boy in the pitch-dark. Vaguely promising to report the accident, he drops her home, and then decides that as nobody witnessed the collision, he'll pretend it never happened. She feels, however, that they should stay apart for a year.
On the anniversary, he takes a call on his Dictaphone, and is startled to hear the boy's dying words, exactly as he heard them on the night. He becomes thoroughly distracted, as noticed by his refreshingly normal-looking secretary (Amzie Strickland), and sends for the mistress he hoped to spend the night with, who also hears the ghost-call. Yet when the tape is played to the police, they hear nothing. We can't reveal the ending, though we can promise you it isn't pretty, and it's as contrived as the rest of the plot.
Your eternally charming host John Newland gets away with his usual brand of blarney: "The conscience can create a voice of its own - the voice of doom, heard only by the guilty."
A married businessman and his married mistress are dining and dancing the night away, while debating some troublesome issue that will be forever unknown, partly because the latter's voice does not register clearly, and partly because the recording has weathered badly across sixty years.
But their disagreement seems to have been resolved, perhaps with the aid of the demon alcohol, by the time he drives her home, even canoodling with her at the wheel. Of course, the inevitable happens, and they find they've run over and killed a boy in the pitch-dark. Vaguely promising to report the accident, he drops her home, and then decides that as nobody witnessed the collision, he'll pretend it never happened. She feels, however, that they should stay apart for a year.
On the anniversary, he takes a call on his Dictaphone, and is startled to hear the boy's dying words, exactly as he heard them on the night. He becomes thoroughly distracted, as noticed by his refreshingly normal-looking secretary (Amzie Strickland), and sends for the mistress he hoped to spend the night with, who also hears the ghost-call. Yet when the tape is played to the police, they hear nothing. We can't reveal the ending, though we can promise you it isn't pretty, and it's as contrived as the rest of the plot.
Your eternally charming host John Newland gets away with his usual brand of blarney: "The conscience can create a voice of its own - the voice of doom, heard only by the guilty."