The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV Series) And So Died Riabouchinska (1988) User Reviews

She Speaks Her Mind

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 24 March 2015]

There have been numerous stories of ventriloquist's dummies being an extension of their masters. In this one a man has been found murdered. He had been pushed down a set of stairs and has died. A detective goes about trying to figure this out. However, the ventriloquist speaks for himself and for the beautiful woman he has created. The more she "says" the more suspicious he becomes. We hear the story of a love affair with a lovely ballerina who left this man and so he made a dummy in her image. Beyond this, it is a sort of dull story, not well presented, although Allan Bates has a major role. But it is still talky and hard to fathom.

"She hides herself so easily".

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 5 January 2022]

The irony of the story lies in the fact that ventriloquist John Fabian (Alan Bates) just couldn't tell a lie. Over the years, he developed such a close relationship with his 'partner' Riabouchinska, that he began to neglect his own wife (Patti Layne). By this point, Alyce Fabian makes no effort to conceal the fact that she has sought comfort with another man - "When one door shuts, another opens". What's not made clear is the reason that Fabian killed a man named Ockham (Jac Berrocal) by pushing him down a flight of stairs. In that regard, this adaptation of the Bradbury story is inferior to the one presented during the first season of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" which originally aired over three decades earlier. In that story, Ockham attempted to blackmail Fabian over his involvement with a dummy, a scandal that would have threatened his career. You see, Riabouchinska was created by Fabian as a replacement for a woman he loved and lost years earlier, a woman he regrettably quarreled with who ran off and never returned. One might come to the conclusion that Fabian himself was a victim of a split personality, imbuing his creation with what looked and sounded like a will of her own, which in fact, served as his alter-ego. In effect, utilizing Riabouchinska's voice to confess to the murder of Ockham made Detective Krovitch's (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) job relatively easy.

There's another reason too that I prefer the Hitchcock presentation of this story. In it you had the inimitable Claude Rains in the role of John Fabian, who brought a more genteel approach to the role of the ventriloquist. And the part of the detective was played by none other than Charles Bronson, who in the early 1950's oftenappeared credited under his real name of Charle Buchinsky. Say, wait a minute. Buchinsky/Riabouchinska? What are the odds?