Dead Ernest

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".

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.

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.