Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are - Series 3, Episode 5 (Saturday 29th June 1974)

The story...

Cathy and Jane are American cousins and tourists holidaying in the UK. One day they are visiting a tower when Jane stumbles while taking pictures and is at risk of falling off. Cathy is next seen at night in a hotel. Fellow residents Paul Eastman and Miss Pendy are awoken by a scream but they assume it is an animal or someone having a nightmare. The next morning Cathy asks the hotel owner Mr Lewis about her cousin Jane who she says is staying in another room but is shocked to be told she never checked in. Cathy cannot believe this, insists Jane came in with her and feels Mr Lewis is lying. She becomes increasingly worried and upset and in conflict with Mr and Mrs Lewis who continue to say she is mistaken. The police are brought in to investigate. However the detective - Inspector Dexter - seems to treat Cathy with contempt, assuming she is either lying or a fantasist. However he is also suspicious of Mr Lewis who is a heavy-drinker prone to drunken rages and with a dark secret waiting to be discovered. Can Cathy be found? Does she even exist - or existed?

Review

The most renowned instalments from the third series are A Coffin for the Bride, I'm the Girl He Wants To Kill and In the Steps of a Dead Man. This episode has attracted less fame but is just as good if not better and is possibly the best of all from that superb run.

Some details here resemble Brian Clemens's excellent 1970 film And Soon the Darkness which in many ways provides the template for Thriller. In both two young women - blonde-haired Cathy and dark-haired Jane - are on holiday in a foreign land when one of them goes missing leaving the other frantically searching for her companion. Both even feature a young man called Paul who gets drawn into events. However there are key differences. Here it is Jane who goes missing - or at least Cathy believes so. The vast majority of Thriller episodes so far had either focused on the activities of a transparent villain or were whodunits. This story though goes in a radically different direction - not just questioning has a crime even occurred but does Jane even exist - or existed? Perhaps the only other previous episode close to this theme was Murder in Mind from Series 1 in which Betty Drew confessed to a murder for which no evidence could be found at all. While that is a good (and in my mind underrated) episode this outing is clearly superior in all regards,

The tone of this story is also very different from its predecessors in Series 3. It is very much a dark and brooding affair. Aside from the teaser and the final minutes almost all the action takes place in the gloomy, rather old-fashioned hotel. The pace may seem a little slow to some viewers and this may have put it a little in the shadow of the most esteemed episodes but if so that is undeserved. Confining so much of the story to the hotel and the slower pace does help to build atmosphere and a sense of foreboding. Even the apparently minor and unspeaking character of Parminter (Kevin Brennan) - one of the hotel staff - is portrayed in an unnerving manner, showing that characters do not have to speak for them to be deeply disconcerting (this had been powerfully illustrated with the character of "the man" in I'm the Girl He Wants To Kill), The excellent direction of John Sichel and set design of Bryan Holgate are both integral to creating a mood of unease, even trepidation. The fear is that there will be no happy ending whatever happens - either Jane never existed and Cathy's mind is seriously disturbed or she did and has been the victim of some dreadful crime or other traumatic event. 

Real mystery is at play. The events at the beginning with Jane on the brink of fatally falling from the tower do suggest that Cathy is right - Jane is missing, despite the disbelief of those around her. Or was that all a hallucination or maybe Jane did fall off the tower to her death and the flashback is to just before that terrible event? Or maybe there was an earlier tragedy with Jane long gone which has scrambled her mind? Or perhaps Jane was never with her at all? What cannot be denied is that Cathy is clearly very upset but what exactly has happened? Is Jane dead? Has she been murdered by the dissolute and unstable hotel owner Arthur Lewis? Is there some other explanation? It is hard not to feel immense sympathy for Cathy in this very perplexing case. The arrival of the bullying, misogynistic Inspector Dexter seems to make her predicament even worse but it appears only a matter of time before the pieces are put together and a devastating picture emerges

Cathy is a compelling character. Whatever has happened to Jane, she has had a difficult life with family breakdown and now it seems she has lost her cousin and only friend. There is excellent use of flashbacks (played over a smeary lens) from Cathy's viewpoint of events from their trip - especially the visit to the tower - and these clearly deeply trouble her. 

On top of all this Dexter is possibly the most memorable detective seen in Thriller. This is certainly not in terms of his skills but his extraordinary behaviour. He is profoundly sexist and a man who seems to believe that an aggressive, contemptuous approach is the way to get the truth out of those he deals with There is a nice contrast between his bluntness and bullying and his rather meek junior colleague Reeves. The Lewis character is another great one. John Carson had given a memorable performance as the confident and ebullient Ray Burns in Possession but here he is just as good in another very different but ultimately suspicious role. Lewis is an unhappy and troubled man whose marriage seems to be crumbling (his wife probably having an affair with guest Paul Eastman) and is struggling to cope with a drink problem. Evidence seems to put him firmly in the frame for Jane's disappearance - assuming she was ever there. If Jane had never checked-in one can imagine his exasperation with Cathy's assertions and later his fear as he falls under suspicion. One cannot help feeling some sympathy for him. 

Cathy struggles to cope with the insensitivity of Inspector Dexter whose colleague Reeves looks on

This would be a very fine episode based simply on the first fifty minutes or so. However it is the final ten minutes that it moves into another league and really excels. There is an extraordinary twist that turns events on their head and causes us to see not one but two characters in a completely different light. The dramatic final scene is one of the very best in Thriller topped by a fantastic pun. Lynda Day George's performance is superb and would certainly be up there with the best by an American guest actor but John Carson and Peter Jeffrey as inspector Dexter are also in exceptional form. The brilliant climax rounds-off a run of five top class episodes at the start of Series 3 and highlights the show at its peak.

Notes

This was the joint-first episode repeated in the UK 1980's when it appeared on Grampian on Thursday September 11th 1980 (ATV showed If It's a Man - Hang-Up! on the same date.).

TV movie title-watch

That first repeat also gave some UK viewers their first chance to see the new movie titles produced for the show. Probably no episode best exemplifies the good, the bad and the ugly of the new movie titles. These ones can be quite suspenseful and are given a very effective purple wash with some good music including an excellent eerie electronic piece by Simon Park. However they are most remembered for a quite ludicrous figure in a skeleton tracksuit who gives chase to Jane Howard and rather over-literally is meant to symbolise death. The figure representing Jane correctly wears a headband yet is wearing a skirt even though Jane was wearing trousers in the scene on which this was based. One suspects this was done so that shots of "Jane" with her legs sprawling on the ground after being caught would be more revealing. This is entirely gratuitous, although not as obviously so as the new  scenes in Screamer and I'm the Girl He Wants To Kill. Clips are used as in other episodes but these give a lot away, again a tendency of the new titles. Altogether these new titles would have given viewers a very misleading guide to the episode that followed, perhaps imagining they were going to see some bizarre graphic horror movie rather than an introspective and sophisticated mystery. They were so strange though that they might have drawn in more viewers than more conventional ones.

These titles are unusual in other ways. The original teaser for the only time is retained at the start of the movie. As the new titles begin a snatch of the original Thriller theme tune is heard for the only time in the ITC versions (possibly an error in the editing process).