The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (TV Series) Night Fever (1965) User Reviews

A Nurse, A Cop, A Criminal

[telegonus · 9/10 · 16 April 2011]

Night Fever is a last season episode of the Alfred Hitchcock hour, manages to be highly dramatic as well as suspenseful, as plain jane spinster nurse Colleen Dewhurst is given the assignment of looking after a severely wounded and rather handsome criminal who was involved in a robbery in which a young police officer was killed. The bedridden criminal turns on the charm, and nurse Dewhurst, circumspect at first, eventually falls for it. She is warned by the plainclothesman in charge of the case that she is dealing with a dangerous character. Before long, as his health gradually improves, the young man is trying to get his nurse to help him escape, making all sorts of promises of romance and adventure as part of the deal. You see, he's fallen in love with her. Or so he says.

This entry in the Hitchcock series is a kind of chamber piece, set in a drab city hospital and featuring a small cast. There's an air of desolation and abandonment to the place, as the viewer gets a strong sense that this is where society's insulted and injured go. Also, the dangerous. The story unfolds slowly but surely, as its central character is drawn into the escape plan of a man she has been warned about by the police. As the story shifts into high gear near the end it takes on the feeling of a dream, with scenes of driving around the city in a pouring rain. The resolution is satisfactory and there's no need to spoil it here. Miss Dewhurst dominates the episode, ably assisted by Tom Simcox as her shifty patient and, especially, Joe De Santis, sans his usual mustache, and quite forceful here as a policeman who knows his job, the criminal mentality and human nature in equal measure.

Nurse With A Heart of Gold

[sneedsnood · 8/10 · 21 April 2015]

Here's a story as old as the hills, and yet it always seems to work. A handsome rake uses his charms to woo a plain woman in order to get something from her -- a fortune, as in "The Heiress," or the keys to his freedom as in this episode. Colleen Dewhurst as nurse Ellen is a good enough actress to convince us that she's plain, but not quite good enough to convince us she'd be dumb enough to fall for this dangerous killer, who is in her care after suffering a gunshot wound in his capture. He is played by chiseled, handsome Tom Simcox, a 1960's pretty boy with an easy masculinity that might best be captured by Tom of Finland. All things considered, it's surprising that Simcox didn't become a bigger star, but I digress. As the plot unfolds, nurse Ellen remains surprisingly brave and cool, and when things get dangerous, her reactions are so strange that she seems to be in shock. In the very satisfying ending, however, we realize that all along there has been more to nurse Ellen than we imagined. The cast includes future "Mod Squad" star Peggy Lipton in a small role.

"I'm in love with you."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 25 January 2023]

It appeared to be a standard practice of the era that if a television program called for an unattractive woman, the film makers would actually cast someone who was at least average looking and not really unsightly. It happened a few times in both of Hitchcock's series, one that comes to mind is "Beast in View". I didn't think there was anything wrong with the way nurse Ellen Hatch (Colleen Dewhurst) looked. She was simply made to look plain for the most part, and when the script called for it, she improved her looks with the fancier hair style.

I'm going to take a different approach from most of the other reviewers for this episode. It seemed to me that the script was at odds with itself when it came to the story's payoff. At the conclusion of the episode, it appeared that nurse Hatch was helping out the police in their effort to catch the second killer of a fellow officer. So then why would she have been disappointed when she learned that Jerry Walsh (Tom Simcox) had a younger and prettier girlfriend after she helped him escape from the hospital. It's true that her lack of self-esteem came from being unmarried and perhaps without prospects, and that she might have been temporarily drawn to Walsh as he played to her emotions and charmed her with comments about her 'natural beauty'. But if she really was helping Walsh escape and reunite with his criminal partner, she would have expressed surprise that the cops were right outside the apartment building that they followed her to. She leaves crestfallen into the night, but you would think that would have been offset by the fact that she helped apprehend a cop killer. Clinching this idea is the fact that the police, in particular Detective Sergeant Martinez (Joe De Santis), didn't even consider arresting her as an accomplice, which would have been the case if she was really planning to help Walsh escape.

Talky until the Payoff

[dougdoepke · 27 March 2016]

An episode like this strikes me as a matter of taste. The plot's a familiar one—a handsome crook flirts with his dowdy nurse to escape confinement in a hospital after being shot in a robbery. We know what his blandishments amount to from the outset, so the only question is how she will deal with it. At the same time, events seldom leave the hospital room or corridors, so there's no entertainment for the eye. What the 60-minutes does have is powerhouse actress Dewhurst who embodies a plain yet disciplined woman whose feelings are clearly repressed over a lifetime. It's a good ironical ending that may come as a surprise, though getting there is pretty well drawn out. But to me the best part is that subtle wrinkle that comes at the very end. It's inspired and turns the entire contest on its head. So don't let it slip by.

Just a plain girl

[searchanddestroy-1 · 10/10 · 3 February 2021]

Coleen Dewhurst brings here a terrific performance, especially near and at the endof this tremendous episode. But the bulk of the interest remains, I repeat, at the end, where there is a very disturbing twist, for those like me who were so stuck by the nurse's character, so moving, so poignant. The last minute is unforgettable, and also, I repeat again, disturbing. I would have love to dig into the psychology of the nurse's character. That would have been fantastic. Coleen Dewhurst at her best. But was she at her worst?

Had Me All the Way

[Hitchcoc · 9/10 · 2 June 2023]

All the way along I kept thinking, "How can you be so stupid?" An arrogant holdup man who killed a cop, manipulates a nurse into helping him escape from a secure hospital room. The police are interested in his accomplice and are relentless in their efforts. The nurse befriends the bad guy and he talks sweetness to her. When she talks about being an accessory after the fact, it falls on deaf ears. This is a nicely done effort. I had a lot of suspicions when the nurse seemed to have a lot of freedom, especially when one could read that she didn't like the treatment by the cops. This is one of the better Hitchcock ventures.

Terrific, but with one "Hitch"

[collings500 · 9/10 · 7 January 2021]

Great, great episode...but like a lot of these narrative-driven stories, the motives of the characters in the end just serve the plot twist and don't jive with real life. SPOILER ALERT!!! There is no way these hardened psychos would allow the nurse to just walk away on the pretext that she's an "accessory" and would therefore never spill the beans as to their whereabouts. How much better would it have been for one of these scumbags to lead her out to what we think is a certain execution, only to have a police officer spring out from the shadows and stick a shotgun in his face? The nurse would keep walking, sad-faced, staring ahead, and never look back as the other cops stormed into the room to take down the scumbag "boyfriend". Why didn't the writers CALL ME? I was about 12 years old back then, and not doin' nothin'.

The Patient in room 114

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 16 March 2012]

***MAJOR SPOILERS**** Survivng a robbery shoot-out where a cop was killed bank robbery suspect Jerry Walsh, Tom Simcox, is under arrest and in critical condition at the local city hospital emergency unit. Refusing to spill the beans in where his partner George Clark, Rayford Barnes, is the cops assigned to the case Detective Sgt. Martinez,Joe De Santis & his partner Det.Gabe Greely,Don Stewart, can only hope Walsh will open up in the possibility of not getting executed in the state's gas chamber for his crime but end up getting a life sentence, with the possibility of parole in 15 or 20 years, if he informers them where Clark the actual trigger man in the crime is.

Looking after Walsh in the hospital is head nurse Ellen Hatch, Colleen Dewhurst, who feels that he's being severely mistreated by the police in being hand cuffed to his hospital bed. Spotting a weakness in Ellen's character,in that she's middle age and very homely looking, the handsome Walsh starts to turn the charm on her which at first she sees right through. Ellen knows she no Liz Taylor or Carroll Baker and no sweet talk from Walsh will convince her of that. Still working on her, Ellen is also a spinster, in feeling alone in the world Walsh by telling a lonely Ellen that he's in love with her finally get through to her and convinces Ellen to help him escape from the hospital and thus escape a possible execution date at the San Quentin gas chamber.

***SPOILERS*** In risking a prison term herself in giving aid and comfort to an accused cop killer Ellen does help Welsh escape and drives him to his hideout or pad where his partner George Clark and Welsh's real girlfriend Pinky,Laurie Mitchell, are holed up in. Seeing that she not Walsh was taken for a ride a distraught Ellen leaves the pad knowing that she now not only lost her job but is facing hard time behind bars for assisting Walsh to escape. ***MAJOR SPOILER*** The silver lining to this Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode is that what at first Walsh thought to be the love sick for him Ellen was in fact on to him right from the start! And it was the manipulating Walsh together with George Clark & Pinky who ended up getting the short end of the stick ,or getting screwed, when the episode was finally over!

A bit overlong but worth seeing.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 30 June 2021]

A patient has been brought to the hospital but he's no ordinary guy. It seems he was shot by the police and he's been arrested for his part in shooting a cop. So, not surprisingly, the police are anxious to get the guy to talk...but doctors are anxious to keep him alive. Once he awakens, the suspected killer befriends his nurse (Colleen Dewhurst) and you can't help but think he's buttering her up in order to get her to help him escape.

This is generally a good episode but like too many before it, the one hour time slot was simply too long and the show was padded as a result...making it more talky than it should have been. Still, the ending is nice and the show worth seeing in this penultimate episode.