Fri 10 Sep 2010
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR “Run for Doom.”
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[3] Comments
“Run for Doom.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 31). First air date: 17 May 1963. John Gavin, Diana Dors, Scott Brady, Carl Benton Reid, Tom Skerritt. Teleplay: James Bridges, based on the novel Run for Doom (1962) by Henry Kane. Director: Bernard Girard.
Nickie Carole (Diana Dors) is beautiful and talented. She works as a nightclub singer for Bill Floyd (Scott Brady), whose interest in her is intensely personal; sometimes to get her attention he slaps her around a little, but she seems to enjoy it. Floyd takes her for granted, however, and that will prove to be a fatal error.
Yes, Nickie is bad news, but that doesn’t stop naive young medico Don Reed (John Gavin) from wanting to marry her. Even after his father (Carl Benton Reid) tells him the findings of a private eye — that Nickie has already beeen married three times to well-to-do men — Don insists on marrying her.
When his father dies unexpectedly, Don comes into a lot of money; so whenever he waves a diamond sparkler under her nose, Nickie’s big eyes get bigger and Don gets even more attractive.
But the girl can’t help it; Nickie tries to seduce another man just to make Don jealous and because she’s bored with married life. What results from this fracas is a lifetime blackmail plan for Don unless he can figure out how to rid himself of this troublesome wench.
And then Floyd re-enters their lives with his own solution to the Nickie Carole dilemma, this time one that involves more than just slapping her around a little…
Diana Dors (a Brit whose accent is always on the verge of manifesting itself) had a reputation for being merely a sex kitten in the Jayne Mansfield tradition, but here she proves that she can act as well as sing provocatively in a strapless evening gown. There isn’t a false note in her performance; she is the perfect femme fatale — and she gets to perform two song numbers, as well.
In addition to Psycho (1960), John Gavin was a spy in OSS 117 (1968) and had two TV series, Destry (1964) and Convoy (1965). Hitchcock reportedly was unhappy with Gavin’s performance in Psycho, but he more than makes up for it here, traversing the emotional gamut from funny to morose and from naive to sinister.
Henry Kane wrote for TV as well as roughly 30 novels and about as many short stories, many of which featured his series character Peter Chambers. As for other media: Martin Kane, Private Eye (6 episodes, 1951-52), Mike Hammer (1 episode, 1958), Kraft Theatre (2 episodes, 1958), the screenplay for Ed McBain’s Cop Hater (1958), Brenner (1 episode, 1959), Johnny Staccato (1 episode, 1959), and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (2 episodes, 1963).
He even wrote a TV tie-in novel to Peter Gunn (1960), a character some claim may have been “inspired” by Kane’s own Peter Chambers.
You can see “Run for Doom” on Hulu here. For more on Henry Kane and his series character Peter Chambers, read Steve Lewis’s review of Until You Are Dead, earlier here on this blog.
September 10th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Gavin was also a candidate to play James Bond for a while. He did play Jean Bruce’s OSS 117 in at least one film. He is probably best remembered for the slick soap opera’s IMITATION OF LIFE and BACK STREET though. His last major film role was THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE with Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore.
Like John Lodge, his film career largely ended when he became an ambassador, in his case to Mexico.
February 8th, 2022 at 5:08 am
A terrific performance by the underrated John Gavin is reason enough to watch this otherwise surprisingly sleazy and sordid episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” that somehow escaped the wrath of the 1963 TV censors. Another talented actor of that era, Scott Brady, also contributes a knockout supporting performance. But the premise of “Run for Doom”–that both of these horny chaps are madly in lust with a femme-fatale-from-hell (impersonated by that bloated, sneering British Monroe-wannabe Diana Dors)–is so preposterous that this wouldbe thriller is more likely to elicit giggles than gasps from the hapless viewer. In fact, the more she shimmies and shakes, Ms. Dors resembles a third-rate drag queen and makes credible poor Tippi Hedren’s charges that Hitchcock (the Master of Suspense) was little more than a dirty old man!
February 12th, 2022 at 6:28 pm
I have seen this episode before; however, saw again on ME TV recently and loved the jazz and standards, especially “Just One of Those Things” I am pretty sure Diana was singing herself with the melody playing throughout the epsidode. I hadn’t heard that great piece by Cole Porter for a long time. Also saw Scott Brady in the 50’s and 60’s movies at my grandparents’ theatre in IL and learned recently he was Lawrence Tierney’s (“Resevoir Dogs”)brother. I am a pianist and love playing the great old songs!