"Night of the Owl," an early Hitchcock hour, toplines Brian Keith as rugged forest ranger Jim Mallory, whose idyllic family is disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious stranger posing as a reverend (Philip Coolidge), who reveals that he and his partner are aware that the Mallorys adopted their eldest daughter, whose real father had ax murdered her mother before hanging himself in prison. The two blackmailers demand 6000 dollars in return for their silence, but things do not go as planned. Both Patricia Breslin ("Homicidal" and "I Saw What You Did"), as Mallory's wife, and blackmailer Philip Coolidge ("The Tingler") were veterans of William Castle fright films. Patricia Breslin soon gave up acting, and later married Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell, with whom she remained for 42 happy years.
Review of Night of the Owl
