Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Young Burt Reynolds - doing his very best to look like Marlon Brando, and showing plenty of mannerisms - gets top billing in this so-so episode, but the real acting is done by the veteran James Bell as his long-suffering father. Quiet, resigned, seemingly a loser in life, this fellow has more resourcefulness than either of the two big-city gangsters who try to abandon him and his son - and the girl they've kidnapped, for whom they have received a large ransom - to bake in the desert sun, a long way (or so Bell tells them) from the next town. As so often in this series, the condescension of big-city folk for their rustic neighbours is, to put it mildly, misplaced. The director, Stuart Rosenberg, went on to direct Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke and W.U.S.A.