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harrietvane · Joined: 01 Apr 2009 Posts: 18

Hello all,

It's driving me crazy, but I just can't identify this OTR episode. I'm almost sure it's Suspense, and I know I've heard at least two different versions of it.

A woman wakes up screaming from a nightmare, waking her husband up as well. She dreamed that he smothered her to death with the pillow. He makes her tell him the whole dream, which she does, in a very surreal and humorous manner that is nevertheless pretty creepy. Another woman turns up who they knew slightly in the past; it's implied the husband is plotting with her to kill the wife (in the dream.)

The dialogue between the two women in the dream is really funny. Because it's a dream, they flatly deliver the subtext of what they're thinking about each other, but as though they were the regular social niceties.

At the end the husband explains very matter of factly how her dreaming mind came up with all these things (for ex: "smothering" came from her restaurant order at dinner for hamburgers "smothered in onions.") He reveals two tickets to [someplace] that he supposedly got the two of them for their honeymoon, the date of which was also in the dream.

Of course it turns out that the plot was real after all, but the wife manages to kill the husband first.

The husband was frustrated in life because he was going to write a book, but never did. "Now you can write that book you never wrote," says the femme fatale.

harrietvane · Joined: 01 Apr 2009 Posts: 18

For those of you following along at home... I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT!

It wasn't Suspense at all. It is a story by Joseph Ruscoll, and it was done twice that I know of:

"Murder at Midnight" as "Nightmare" on 11-11-46. Can't find the actors' names just at present.

"Murder by Experts" as "I Dreamt I Died" on 9-12-49, starring Ann Shephard, Grace Coffin, James Stevens.

I think the "Murder at Midnight" version is much the better of the two. The dream sequences are so crazy! The "Murder by Experts" version seems more self-aware and almost trying to be campy... not as good.

Editing to add... one thing I do prefer about the second version is the ending! Maybe I can splice the two together and make my perfect version!

Ruscoll also wrote the truly fantastic "Creeper" which was done on Suspense and other shows as well.

Phew -- this has seriously been driving me NUTS!