(TV Series)

(1949)

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8/10
Great early TV thriller!
gordonl565 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Couple Ernest and Margaret, (Will Hart and Patricia Jenkins) are out on the town for the day. Hart to take in a ball game while Jenkins catches a double feature at the movie house. They kiss and she asks if he has his medical letter with him. It seems that Hart suffers from narcolepsy when he gets over stressed. This puts him in to a coma like state that can be mistaken for death. So he keeps a letter in his jacket pocket explaining that his body should not be embalmed or autopsied for at least 8 hours. Jenkins hit the movies and Hart heads for the ball field. Not 50 feet down the street he gets clipped by a car and down he goes in a heap. A cop is soon on the spot. He removes Hart's coat to use as a pillow for Hart's head. They then wait for the medical boys to show. Hart is soon pronounced dead and taken to the morgue. His jacket is left lying on the sidewalk where a second hand clothes seller grabs it up. The man, Barry Macallum, is dusting off the jacket when a young couple, Tod Andrews and Marg Phillips, enter his shop. They are in the market for a man's jacket. Needless to say they end up with Hart's. Back at their apartment they discover the letter. Andrews blows it off as a gag but Phillips is not so sure. She gets on the horn and starts making phone calls. Meanwhile Hart has been taken to the morgue for an exam. The morgue attendant, Joshua Shelly, is busy listening to the Dodgers and puts off starting. Phillips gets a bee in her bonnet about the letter and heads back to the shop where they bought the jacket. Macallam comes clean on how he came into possession of said jacket. Phillips quickly calls the police who call the morgue. Shelley, still listening to the game, ignores the phone as he prepares his instruments. Just as Shelley is about to start his first cut on Hart's neck his glasses fog up. "What the heck"? He looks closer at Hart and is given quite the start as Hart comes out of his fit. A close call! A quick little half hour that holds up very well. The story is a television version of a radio play of the same name from the SUSPENSE radio program. The director was vet television man Robert Stevens. Stevens also directed THE BIG CAPER from 57.

One of the films on the bill for Jenkin's double feature is WHIPLASH with Dane Clark.

This is probably the earliest show i've reviewed so far. It hit the airwaves on May 3rd 1949.
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7/10
That reminds me something...
searchanddestroy-124 March 2020
I am sure this story was the DNA of Henry Sleasar's story which inspired an ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS series episode ONE GRAVE TOO MANY, more than another AH PRESENTS ep called BREAKDOWN, as our good friend Martinhafer told just before, though it was also a catalepsy story. In ONE GRAVE... it is question of a man supposed dead, but with a piece of paper in his pocket, a note telling that he is sick, a particular illness that may let him in this way. Then a couple finds this note and guess what. In the other episode starring Joseph Cotten , you have not the note element, just the focus on Joseph Cotten speaking to himself, an inner voice explaining his inner condition.
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9/10
I wish they all were this good!
planktonrules10 February 2017
I have watched a few episodes of the old time television show "Suspense" and up until now I was unimpressed. However, "Dead Ernest" is a winner--an exciting and well executed show that stands up well over time. Like many of the TV shows of the time, the music is crappy organ music (a carryover from radio) and you can't really hold this against the show.

When the story begins, a man drops his wife off at the theater and he's on the way to a ballgame. However, his wife nags him--asking him if he's wearing his medic alert ID bracelet and with a letter inside his coat pocket. It seems he suffers from catalepsy--and he might appear dead when he's very much alive. It's a real but rare disorder. Unfortunately, he's then hit by a car and appears to be dead...and two very unfortunate things happen that make him lose his letter and his ID bracelet! How he's some John Doe in the morgue and they might just start an autopsy on the poor guy...even though he's very much alive. Fortunately, after a jerk stole the coat, a young couple bought it and found the letter explaining the man's condition. Now they have to work fast to try to track the man down before it's too late!

This is a great idea and the acting is quite nice. In fact, I am pretty sure it inspired an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" just a few years later. In "Breakdown" a man (Joseph Cotten) has had an accident and is paralyzed...and folks assume he's dead and he cannot get them to notice! Both are great programs and this definitely encourages me to try a few more episodes of "Suspense".
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Hokey beyond belief
lor_22 January 2024
This 1949 TV broadcast for "Suspense" that's based on a radio play is dated in many ways, as the script drags out a Poe-styled gimmick of Ernest, struck with a fit of catalepsy out on the street and sent to the morgue to be embalmed, though he's still alive!

There's too much quaintness and contrivance here to be believable, though the no-name cast of actors do their mostest to keep the suspense going, right up through a scary climax. Also, quite a bit of filming outdoors on location helps, as opposed to later in this series when the live show is trapped inside a studio on phony sets for the duration.

When it was finally all over, I couldn't help but think that this ancient material might have made for a comedy remake starring Jim Varney as "Dead Ernest". But played straight it's as hokey as you can get.
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