The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV Series) The Utterly Perfect Murder (1992) User Reviews

Sentimental story of visiting the past and coming to terms with letting go!

[blanbrn · 7/10 · 12 October 2020]

This "Ray Bradbury Theater" episode from season 5 episode 6 called "The Utterly Perfect Murder" is one that's sentimental as it goes back in time and has one to come to terms with letting go and facing the future. It involves Douglas now a grown old man who starts to have flashbacks and memories of his days as a young boy when he enjoyed piano only to be bullied by Ralph and a band of boys. Now it's time for a revisit road trip as Doug packs up old things like toys and decides to travel to his old hometown and area to visit Ralph and he has sinister plans. Only upon seeing an old version of Ralph it's like a change of heart happens for Doug. It's like it's now okay to come to terms with life and the future and let go of the past. Overall well done episode of reflection a sentimental one of time and life.

Going After a Big Nothing!

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 3 April 2015]

The setup on this is quite good. A guy named Doug Spaulding (it would seem that half of Bradbury's boy protagonists are named Doug or Tom) was tormented as a child by a guy named Ralph. Because Doug was small and artistic, becoming an accomplished pianist, the bullies were on his case all the time. He was reminded over and over that he had no right to be in their gang and that his interest in music was worthless. Of course, Ralph had a pack of toadies who were probably just as scared of him. Well, young Ralph promised Doug that he would continue to threaten him, even when they were both old and gray. Doug has just had a birthday (he's probably in his sixties) and he decides it's time to do this guy in. He packs up toys that represent the pain he has endured, puts a small pistol in the same box, and heads off to take care of business. First he visits his old house and spends time with a dog that lives there. Then he checks to see that Old Ralph still lives in the house he grew up in. He does! I thought the conclusion was right on because sometimes tables get turned. Richard Kiley is quite good as Douglas.

"Just look me up when you're old and gray."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 16 February 2022]

Doug Spalding (Richard Kiley) frequently relives his boyhood past when he was bullied by a neighborhood kid named Ralph. He's carried around this torment for fifty years, and harbors such anger that he intends to go back to his childhood home and seek revenge on the now grown man who ran the local gang. He packs up his childhood mementoes with the intention of surprising Ralph (Robert Clothier) before he shoots him. But when the moment of truth occurs, all of Doug's animosity melts away, presumably because Ralph now poses a frail and non-intimidating figure. I think the key to this episode occurred in a brief childhood flashback in which Doug angrily yells out 'I hate you Ralph', followed by 'I love you Ralph', which might have been a token of admiration for the kind of boy he wished he could have been. Reliving his youthful memories, harsh as they might have been, allowed Doug to come to terms with his childhood enemy and realize that it was time to let go.

Less than perfect

[gridoon2024 · 4/10 · 12 August 2015]

You know the old saying "When you show a gun in the first act, you have to use it in the third act"? Well, sometimes it's good to stray from the formula (as the ironically titled "The Utterly Perfect Murder" does), but you must have something to put in its place. This episode is actually better-directed than most (notice how the passing of the decades is depicted through the different telephone device models), and Richard Kiley gives a convincing performance as a superficially calm old man with a lifetime's worth of rage inside him. But the ending is one of the weakest in the history of the show: there is no payoff, no twist, nothing. The episode just....ends. And so does this comment. *1/2 out of 4.