User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** Dropping into a local diner con artists couple Frank & Lorna Bramwell, Charles Bronson & Norma Crane, overhear some gossip about this old lady Monica Laughton, Estella Winwood, who lives all by herself in this big house up the road and is loaded to the gills with cash that her husband left her when he finally kicked off.

Seeing an easy mark the two go to see Monica with the excuse that their assessing her house for the town in how much real-estate taxes she's to pay by the end of the year. Before either the Bramwells can open their mouths Monica mistakes them for her relatives and invites them to stay and meet the family. It turns out that the family consists of about a dozen members of the Laughton clan who are invisible to the naked eye! Inside the house and determined to find where Monica keeps her money hidden both Frank & Lorna start to play along with her. After a while in getting nowhere in finding the hidden cash,that's expected to be as much as one million dollars, Frank loses his cool and start to strong arm the 73 year old widow in getting her to tell him where she has the money hidden! During all this time, which seems like a couple of days, both Frank & Lorna had nothing at all to eat in that the food that Monica served them was as invisible as the relatives she had staying in her house!

****SPOILERS**** As it turned out Monica did finally cook or bake up something for the Bramwell's just to get them both out of her house and her hair. And as the hungry as a starved timber wolf Bramwell's gobbled the food down, fresh baked cupcakes and milk, it turned out to be their last meal on earth! As we see both at the beginning an end of the Alfred Hitchcock episode Teddy the milkman, Dobbs Greer, the only person who keeps in contact with Monica brings her the weekly supplies of milk and cream to her house. Teddy seems to know that there's something strange going on in the Laughton house in all the people or guests dying there but he isn't talking. All Teddy does is delivers the milk and what Monica does with it, or with those living in her house,is non of his business.

This was Charles Bronson's second appearance in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents story, only about five weeks following a prior first season episode titled "And So Died Riabouchinska". In that one he was a police detective, but this time he's on the opposite side of the law, along with wife Lorna Bramwell (Norma Crane), hoping to cash in on an elderly widow's fortune overheard at a local diner. The story enters surreal territory of sorts when said lonely widow is found to entertain a house full of imaginary guests, leaving the Bramwells at first incredulous, but after a while, hugely impatient to get on with robbing the woman of all her wealth. As the delusional but feisty widow, Monica Laughton (Norma Crane) turns the tables on her uninvited guests by whipping up one of her baked goods specialties, laced with just the right ingredient to make quick work of the disturbing couple. I'm not so sure that as some other reviewers mentioned, Mrs. Laughton dispatched other house guests in the same manner, but taken in the spirit of the show's whimsical writing, it wouldn't come as a big surprise. Fortunately, the milk delivery man (Dabbs Greer) had to be an honest sort, what with all those thousand dollar bills of Mrs. Laughton's just hiding in plain sight.

Estelle Winwood's character is one of the most frightening I've every seen on screen. Here is this eccentric little old lady who has a house full of invisible guests, all of whom have "died" at some point. The milkman is a regular visitor and he knows that she has a couple of loose screws. He advises her to care for her money, but what he doesn't know is that she is the consummate killer. Enter Charles Bronson and his girlfriend. They get wind of all the money that the old lady has and finagle their way into her good graces. They are introduced to all the guests and relatives, none of whom take on a corporeal form. They have to play along, but Bronson gets too impatient. The other factor is that none of the food is real, so the two of them are starving. Well, the young man makes a fatal error and the old lady decides he is not a respectable person. This leads to a couple more black wreathes hanging outside the front door. She does this all the time. I wonder how many of those "guests" were done in by the old rat poison.

Another dull tale, almost identical to the last episode. Trying to get an old lady's money, moving in and dying from ingesting something at breakfast. They would most assuredly look in the purse, if not just out of sheer boredom. It's not funny anyhow.