Alfred Hitchcock Presents, S1E33, "The Belfry"

The series gets back into form with this tight, well-executed episode, so I want to start with a special shoutout to director Herschel Daugherty (who will also helm another episode this season, the acknowledged classic “The Creeper”). Daughterty had a sprawling career as a TV director–he eventually did 16 episodes of Thriller, too, so I’ll continue talking about him even when I eventually switch shows–and that includes 24 AHP episodes.

He makes a strong start here, because this is an episode where the direction takes center stage. “The Belfry” isn’t a bottle episode, but it mostly sticks close to the one-room schoolhouse¹ and the belfry above it, and the use of that limited space really works to the episode’s advantage. On-screen suspense hugely benefits from the viewer having a mental map of that space it’s working in, and “The Belfry” embraces that.

The story is deliberately simple, and several of its main faces–Pat Hitchcock, Jack Mullaney, John Compton, and Dabbs Greer–are already familiar to us from other episodes, which feels like it boils this down even further and emphasizes how much here is about setting and situation. Earnest but erratic Clint Ringle (Mulleny) yearns for sweet schoolteacher Ellie (Hitchcock); he’s blown a few innocent dates all out of proportion, and he’s so convinced that she’ll marry him that he’s already started building “their” house. When Ellie insists she’s engaged to Walt Norton (Compton), and Walt has the audacity to back her up on that, Clint loses it. One axe swing later, Walt is gone for good, and Clint’s on the run. After dodging the sheriff’s posse for a while, he retreats to the school’s belfry, huddling alongside the massive bell and waiting … waiting … waiting.

Or, more simply: a jealous murderer hides out in the belfry just above where the object of his warped affection works.

It’s a condensed blend of “man on the run” and “stalker drama,” and it pulls from both sources, especially as Clint’s focus shifts. At first, he’s deluded enough to believe that he can simply come down from the belfry once Ellie’s “calmed down,” and the two of them can run away together. Later, after hearing she belittled the house he was building, his feelings change, and he begins plotting her death.

This is a sharply observed transition: her rejection of him was about her actual feelings and desires, and he was so comfortable ignoring those that he didn’t even have to think about it. Of course she’d change her mind, he told himself. Her rejection of the house, on the other hand, feels like ingratitude, so he instantly begins imagining punishing her for it.

The episode has the technical challenge of making Clint menacing even as he spends most of the time hiding next to a bell instead of committing more axe murders, and while it could have tried to get away with letting the tension simmer on the backburner–we know he’s killed, we know he wants to kill again, we know (and the other characters do not) just how physically close he is at all times–it instead wisely throws in some mini-developments to up the tension further. Those events are usually pulling double duty, too: serving as incident and functioning outside of the strict plot requirements. The threat he leaves on Ellie’s blackboard–“Ill git you to”–is both a sharp shock for her (the stalker side of the episode) and a dry, cutting example of how Clint’s “romance” was always doomed (Ellie, a teacher, may not have wanted a relationship with someone considerably less educated; if Clint ever tried to learn from her, we obviously see no sign of it in this note).

The best bit here, though, is when the children’s ball accidentally goes into the belfry, and one boy is sent up on the roof to get it. It’s such a clever, plausible way to heighten the suspense and raise the stakes, and Daugherty’s control here is sublime as the tension builds and builds. It’s a scenario where my mind automatically, feverishly generates possible outcomes: will Clint try to balance the ball on the ledge? What happens if the boy grabbing it sees him hunkered down below? What happens if it falls off and bounces down the roof? Will he give his position away?

The climb takes long enough, and Clint’s indecision is obvious enough, that the episode obviously invites this frantic problem-solving–and then resolves it in (nearly) the darkest possible way, bringing us to the point where Clint readies himself to murder a child. (Who is saved only by a concerned, peevish cry to get down from there.)

“The Belfry” may not hit the highs of, say, “Breakdown,” but it’s sharply directed and both elegant and clever in its pared-down simplicity. It amps up the tension so much that it sometimes feels more like horror than suspense, and I have a lot of affection for works that can straddle that particular genre line, as well as for works that (mostly) take place in a confined location. You can see that this one was made for me.

The Twist: It’s more surprising to Clint than to us, but he gets fatally clobbered when the bell is finally rung to signal the end of Walt Norton’s funeral.

I think almost any contemporary version of this story would have Ellie ring the bell–by keeping her hands clean of even accidental death, the story also cheats her out of a poignantly vicious bit of closure for the loss of her fiancé²–or at least go for some pitch-black comedy by having one of the kids do it. Assigning the sheriff the role loses some dramatic force, but it gains what I assume it’s going for: a sense of solemn cosmic justice.

Even if I’d have preferred a different bell-ringer, this is still a strong ending. Like the rest of the episode, it’s well-staged and well-structured, and I appreciate how–within the bounds of 1956 broadcast TV–it goes for the throat with the horror, letting Clint wake up just in time to see the bell swinging straight at his head and then doubling and tripling down on whatever gore the audience is imagining with that vigorous ringing, unending ringing at the end as the sheriff calls in the town and beats Clint’s brains into the wall of the belfry. That last touch feels genuinely Hitchcockian in its elegantly off-screen brutality.

We’ve been having some weaker episodes lately, so it was nice to have one I’m entirely fond of.

Directed by: Herschel Daugherty

Written by: Allan Vaughan Elston (story), Robert C. Dennis (teleplay)

Up Next: “The Hidden Thing”

1. Obviously the building in town, since we see that it double as the church: this gives us the comedic visual of a lot of adults sitting at child-sized desks during a funeral, just as a bonus. ↩︎
2. And, at least to some extent, the loss of a safer, more settled future. There’s a bitter sting to one character commenting that Ellie will only take a day off to grieve because “she’s gonna need that $60 a month more than ever now.” She’s been plunged into financial insecurity as well as into loneliness and grief. You know what, town, how about taking up a collection for her and giving her at least a week to get over the man she loved being murdered in front of her? ↩︎