This episode has more viewer reviews than any other HItchcock episode I've come across so far as I watch this series in order. I think that's because there's so many ways to interpret the story as you'll see if you read a handful of them. The idea that Chill Wills' character is the escaped mental patient is one of them, except when he tells his story, you see the hands of someone clawing away on the outside of the train window during a snowstorm. Kilmer (Wills) repeatedly refers to his experience as a cowboy many years earlier when he almost froze to death while herding sheep on the range, and mentions how he feels like he's reliving his past. The ambiguity seems to be intended, because one might consider the 'person' outside the train as a manifestation of Kilmer's youth somehow becoming corporeal and trying to get into the warmth of the train. The appearance of the apparition reminded me of the gremlin episode of the Twilight Zone, the one where William Shatner literally went crazy believing he saw some kind of creature on the wing of an airplane in flight.
There is also of course, the matter of the disruptive young boy Johnny (Peter Lazer). His parents (Biff McGuire, Cloris Leachman) have different views on how to discipline him; in the father's case, he really doesn't discipline him at all. He wrongfully, as the mother insists, decides to reward the boy with a silver dollar for remaining quiet and well behaved, which he should be doing on his own anyway. Not only that, but Johnny is given a couple of free passes when he does disrupt the story by Kilmer. And in typical fashion, the undisciplined lad slips his 'reward' under his belt where it quickly slips out, only to be filched by the train porter. I think it bothered me more that Scatman Crothers was the one to take the coin than for the boy to lose it, as he's always been one of my favorite character actors, and I always considered him a good guy.
So ultimately, I think the episode leaves more questions than answers with it's ambiguous conclusion. The case of the escaped mental patient is never resolved entirely, leaving a couple of possibilities. And Johnny is certainly going to continue his disruptive behavior, which before it became clinically diagnosed, displayed all the symptoms of attention deficit disorder. I think out of all the Hitchcock episodes I've seen so far, this is the one that will stay with me the longest.
There is also of course, the matter of the disruptive young boy Johnny (Peter Lazer). His parents (Biff McGuire, Cloris Leachman) have different views on how to discipline him; in the father's case, he really doesn't discipline him at all. He wrongfully, as the mother insists, decides to reward the boy with a silver dollar for remaining quiet and well behaved, which he should be doing on his own anyway. Not only that, but Johnny is given a couple of free passes when he does disrupt the story by Kilmer. And in typical fashion, the undisciplined lad slips his 'reward' under his belt where it quickly slips out, only to be filched by the train porter. I think it bothered me more that Scatman Crothers was the one to take the coin than for the boy to lose it, as he's always been one of my favorite character actors, and I always considered him a good guy.
So ultimately, I think the episode leaves more questions than answers with it's ambiguous conclusion. The case of the escaped mental patient is never resolved entirely, leaving a couple of possibilities. And Johnny is certainly going to continue his disruptive behavior, which before it became clinically diagnosed, displayed all the symptoms of attention deficit disorder. I think out of all the Hitchcock episodes I've seen so far, this is the one that will stay with me the longest.