These Hitchcock stories almost always came up with a novel twist at the end to shock and surprise the viewer, but this one asks you to accept the idea that the austere Sir Humphrey Orford (Michael Rennie) kept his first wife locked up for twenty years after cutting her tongue out so as not to give her presence away. It does come as a lightning bolt to poor Elisa Minden (Antoinette Bower), right after she married the much older man. For me, the set up to the story was somewhat better than the payoff, as Sir Humphrey's character was revealed to be mysterious and sinister, delighting in the idea that instruments of torture could be utilized for pleasure and purification. He had his first wife's lover hanged shortly after their marriage when she proved unfaithful, and proudly displayed a gruesome painting of it in his study. Elisa's instincts about Humphrey were good ones, and why she followed through with the marriage was more a courtesy to her father (Jack Livesey), who was in debt to the man. Taken at face value, the shock ending is a good one, but seems to fall apart when one takes a moment to think about it. Twenty years a recluse with a hidden wife is plenty creepy, and would have been pretty hard to pull off no matter how secretive Humphrey tried to be.
Review of The Silk Petticoat
