The Hitchhiker (Deadly Nightmares): Season #1

The Hitchhiker (Deadly Nightmares)

Season #1

🍸🍸Episode #1: Shatter Vows🍸🍸 – A gold-digging young man marries a dowager then falls in love with her gorgeous stepdaughter. Jeff Boder marries a much older woman to get at her fortune but finds himself falling for her beautiful stepdaughter. He uses a mysterious statuette he received from his grandmother to get rid of his wife, only to find that must also pay the consequences for his actions. A greedy man and his older rich wife’s greedy stepdaughter become lovers and plan to kill the woman using cursed Voodoo-like dolls. Handsome and ambitious young man Jeff Boder marries the wealthy and much older Jackie Winslow for her considerable fortune. Jeff falls under the enticing spell of Jackie’s bitchy and cynical stepdaughter Pamela. Jeff finds a way to bump off Jackie using a mysterious statuette given to him by his grandmother so both him and Pamela can inherit her money. However, things don’t ultimately work out as planned in the long run. An athletic, outdoors sports-type, handsome young man, playboy-wannabe, Jeff Boder (Bruce Greenwood), hooks up with a wealthy widow, Mrs. Jackie Winslow (played by lovely Alexandra Stewart, from “Zeppelin,” 1971) who apparently is a cougar (an older single woman who seeks younger men). Jackie lives in a posh seaside villa somewhere on the California coast. Jeff is delighted, feeling he has hit the big time with a rich woman who is fine-looking to boot and even better in bed. What more could a young man want? But in steps Jackie’s cynical daughter, Pamela (Aleisa Shirley), who bears a similar resemblance to her mother. The daughter takes an immediate liking to Jeff and warns him that her mother has gone through a number of previous young lovers, discarding them when she becomes bored. Pamela effectively seduces Jeff in a torrid bathtub scene and converts him over into plotting the liquidation of her mother. To make a long story short, Jeff marries Jackie. On top of their grand wedding Jeff has placed a magical porcelain figurine of a well-dressed man and woman. It was given to him by his grandmother (Anna Teghararian) as a good luck charm but with the injunction that it cannot be misused and the bearer must be pure of heart. Jeff discovers later on the porcelain figure does have mystical power which he misuses. He essentially uses it as some kind of upscale modern Voodoo doll against his wife. But the porcelain charm affects him as well. In a diabolical plot with Pamela, Jeff dons a scuba divers air tank and breathes out of the attached hose. Meanwhile, his partner-in-crime, Pamela, places a glass hood over the porcelain figurine. The rich wife, in another location, can’t breathe and dies from suffocation. Jeff is at the seaside house with Pamela, so the perfect crime is committed. After a certain amount of time, Pamela removes the glass hood and Jeff no longer needs the air tank to breathe. After the late wife’s funeral, Jeff and Pamela meet back at the seaside house. They congratulate each other on the successful scheme. Jeff inherited everything and he can now wed Pamela. They undress each other and begin to make love. In the other room, stands a bird cage hiding a weird, creepy mynah bird that was the late Jackie’s favorite pet, even though Jeff understandably couldn’t abide by the screeching, oft human-mimicking bird. While the guilty couple have sex, the mynah bird escapes its cage and flies over to the porcelain figure. It starts scratching and clawing at the figures. In the bedroom the culpable lovers are shocked and frightened when bleeding wounds appear on Jeff’s chest and shoulder. The mynah continues scratching the figurine and it claws scratch the male figurine’s eye. In the bedroom, Jeff screams in pain and clutches his bleeding eye. Terrified and in pain, he stumbles out of the house onto the concrete walkway which leads down the house since it is built on a hill. His equally terrified and shocked lover, Pamela, follows, calling after him. She sees Jeff stumble and trip and then fall down the concrete stairway. Halfway down, Jeff’s body suddenly shatters into porcelain chunks, shards and pieces. The camera pans into his porcelain face, broken off and lying amidst the debris, showing one ruined eye, as if that’s how the porcelain head was molded and painted. Pamela, bewildered and frightened, can only stand in shock staring at the scattered porcelain pieces and debris of her lover, just seconds ago a flesh-and-blood young man. What kind of devilry is this? She’ll never understand. The voice of the Hitchhiker intones over the background that Jeff tried to reach for too much. The unspoken moral of the story is a frequent one, that of Greed, one of the Seven Sins, reaps its own horrific punishment.