s1, episodes 25 and 26

1.25 

Charles Bronson again, this time as the villain. This is another bilk-the-old-lady episode. 

Bronson overhears locals talking about the money she has stashed in her house. He and his girl go to see her. There is a nice scene  when she introduces the couple to all her old friends, who we see don't exist. She’s batty. They’re hungry. Maybe the hunger means something.

Not to give anything away, but the music makes that “waah, waah” sound at the end.

1.26

AH calls his audience “necromaniacs” and then teases us that the hero of our story is already dead. 

We begin in heaven and British actor John  Williams is the recently deceased. He’s a mystery writer who finds out he was murdered. He's miserable because he doesn’t know who killed him, so they let him return to life for a day to find out. BTW, the archangel is Alfred from the Batman TV show (but doesn’t look like him). 

Our protagonist soon realizes that everyone had a motive to kill him, which seems to be the point. I kind of like the ending in this light-hearted episode.

S1, episodes 23 and 24

1.23 

British actor John Williams actor (in is 2nd of 10 appearances in the series) is digging in his basement. There's a nice shot where the camera (from his perspective) sizes up the hole and then his wife standing on the far side of it. So this is to be her grave? 

They plan a long stay in California (the servant is laying dust covers all their furniture). Before leaving, they have tea with friends, and the camera focuses on the protagonist standing by a wall, listening to the pointless chatter. This is well directed, and then I check to see that it's AH himself at the reins. 

Not an action-packed episode nor a great ending, but I like it a lot thanks to Williams and Hitchcock.

1.24. 

AH begins with knife in is back. Narration introduces our characters. Aunt Rosie inherits a lot of money. There are two adult sons (one a rascal, one broke) drooling over the money, which they’ll get when she dies. She has a talking parrot. Ugh, will the parrot be vital to the plot? 

So the rascally one moves in with her and has the gruesome idea to put ground glass in her food. We see it being ground with a mortar and pestle. This grisliness is the best part of an otherwise forgettable  episode.

S1, episodes 20, 21 and 22

1.20. 

This is the better of the two ventriloquist episodes that will appear in the first few seasons. It's worth seeing just for Claude Rains (post stardom) and Charles Bronson (pre). Ray Bradbury again wrote the story.

Bronson is a detective investigating a crime. The ventriloquist seems nutty. No real ventriloquism is used, by the way (Virginia Gregg does the dummy's voice; we saw her in the Christmas ep.). 

1.21. 
AH is wearing an eye patch and shooting pool. This is one of the few times someone else speaks in the opening. 

Our hero is a female journalist beyond the Iron Curtain. She meets, Jan Gubak, the Greatest Soccer player in the world (“even according to your capitalist commentators”). I think this may be Czechoslovakia, but both Werner Klemperer and John Banner both appear(!).  Anyway, it's moderately interesting at best, with a flabby twist ending.

1.22 
A man goes to monastery seeking revenge against a guy who's obtained asylum there. This goes for a meaning deeper than twist ending, but I'm not sold. 

Claude Akin appears as a cop at the end. Also, AH is funny in the ending, joking about how it wasn’t supposed to be about a murder at all, but the actors got out of hand.

S1, episodes 18 and 19

1.18 

Ray Bradbury wrote this baby, as AH tells us. We see three deaths: car crash, man falls out of building, and a fire caused by a cigarette. 

It's a hot day. Two retired insurance men (a bit of forced exposition tells us this) are observers in the tenement district. “More murders committed at 92 degrees than at any other temperature.” They confront a brash working class woman, who they see as a specimen rather than a person. 

"Your place is a death trap."

"You want me to fix the gas leak? How am I gonna pay for it?"

"I understand your problems."

"Oh, baloney!” 

The ending is implied rather than shown. This is a "serious" episode that illustrates the gap between the social reformers and those they try to help. The story was used again in Ray Bradbury Theatre (1990).

1.19. 

An absurdly spoiled wife buys stole for $1,700. “I warned you I was expensive, if you can’t afford me on your income, do something about it," she says to her husband.

The financial pressures make him desperate. A couple of petty crooks appear at his home. One of the actors died two months later, the other lived long enough to appear in Seinfeld (the Bette Midler episode). This is the most interesting thing I have to say about this episode.

S1, episodes 16 and 17

1.16 

Robert Stevens directed a boatload of episodes in this series, but here he's only the third most noteworthy director. There's Hitchcock, of course, and there's John Cassevetes, who is one of the two lead actors. This is one of my favorite episodes of Season 1.

Cassevetes gives a very strong, modern performance as an escaped convict who invades a young woman's home. He's menacing, and there are about as many allusive sexual threats as they could show in those days. I'm not sure if all actions here make sense, but it's not head-slappingly unrealistic. The ending makes me want to re-watch to see why I didn't see it coming.

1.17 

A Lizzie Borden episode that takes place one year after her acquittal, which would be 1893. So this places it nearly equidistant between the original event and now. To my eyes, the setting looks much closer to the former (black and white will do that).

It begins with a girl singing the famous song about 40 whacks. Meanwhile, a pushy reporter wants to write an article on Lizzie. Her sister Emma interferes (the episode is titled The Older Sister). The story takes as true one of the theories about what really happened. Interesting for those who care about Lizzie Borden's saga, but otherwise is fairly dull, IMO.

S1, episodes 14 and 15

Welcome to 1956! Our first two episodes are salvaged by their final twists (both are kind of funny).

1.14.

Aired the night of New Year's Day. AH says he has a cure for insomnia “in capsule form” (bullets) with “handy applicator” (gun). 

A (seemingly) nebbishy office drone is fired from his long time job.  He responds by shooting his boss before leaving for work. Sleeping late the next day, he expects to be greeted by the police. Instead, the office calls to complain that he's late. Weirder still, his boss isn't dead.

The ultimate explanation strains credulity, but there's a very good final twist. In the post-mortem, AH explains that all stories have morals, though he’s not sure which one fits this time.

1.15 

Cornell Woolrich is ID'ed as the writer of this episode. As a crime writer perhaps, he was perhaps a tier below Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, but is still in print today.

This is a wise guy episode. A dumb hoodlum wants to commit murder and pays a lot of money for a good alibi. I don’t buy this plot and think the "baby" sequence is stupid. But the ending made me smile.

This is also worth seeing for its portrayal of mobsters. As with our earlier cowboy episode, the "hard-boiled" dialogue almost plays for laughs to my ears. 

Period detail: The club has a black bartender (I believe this is the most prominent African-American role we've seen so far). 

S1 episodes 12 and 13

The last two episodes of 1955, not quite so good, IMHO.

1.12 

This Christmas episode was shown on December 18th. In the prelude, AH bricks up his chimney. 

The episode begins in the Municipal Rehabilitation Shelter. Our protagonist is a pugnacious Irish petty criminal. His social worker is Virginia Gregg, who did the voice of Norma Bates in Pyschos 1, 2, and 3 (uncredited each time). She gets him a job as a department store Santa (would anyone give an ex-con that job today?). 

The man develops a somewhat friendly relationship with a tough kid, who is pretty horribly played. In the spirit of the season, we get a feel good ending. Blecch. I did like the lead actor and smiled at a joke at the end, where the social worker doesn't get the lingo:

“Well who’d want a hot Santa Claus suit?” 

“That’s right, it’s very warm.” 

1.13

Broadcast on Christmas Day, 1955, this is the story about a man trying to bilk an old lady out of an expensive vase (the Cheney Vase, which gives the episode its title). He insinuates herself into her life to try to take advantage. There's not a lot of tension or dramatic build up, and the ending falls flat for me. 

S1, episodes 9, 10 and 11

Fairly strong sequence of three in a row:

1.9

AH is playing slots and wins...three oranges come out of the chute. Our episode is about a gambler who is in over his head and looking for a way to skip town. He responds to an ad asking for an English companion to drive to San Francisco with him.  He adopts a phony British accent, which sounds quite authentic as he is played by Peter Lawford (his fake American accent narrates). Very British episode with a twist ending, some hints along the way.

BTW, here's Lawford on What's My Line? Note the host's reference to "your brother-in-law, Senator Jack."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkkR1nHcF5g

1.10

AH directs this interesting change of pace episode. After all, the show can't all be twist endings every week.

Tom Ewell is a rich guy with a butler and, apparently, an identical double. He tells about half the story in flashbacks. We wait for an explanation, half expecting to be disappointed. In these cases, I usually don’t want it to make perfect sense. 

This story was later made into the film The Man Who Haunted Himself starring Roger Moore.

1.11

We move to a working class (mostly ethnic) setting, and our hero is a man who owns a grocery shop and lives upstairs. His wife makes him scrapple for dinner. A female neighbor looks like she’s been beaten by her husband. They hear them scuffle through the open windows. 

Wife: “He’s beating her.” 

Protagonist: (shrugs) “Some people like to fight.” 

The theme has something in common with Rear Window (released the previous year) about whether to stick your nose into your neighbors' business if you think the business might be murder.

S1, episodes 7 and 8

1.7. 

AH directs (as he does only occasionally) and Joseph Cotton stars. This is a morality play about about a businessman who lays off one of his long time workers by telephone. He's disgusted by the man's simpering (“He didn’t have to weep about it"). While driving a convertible and not wearing a seat belt (period detail), the businessman is in a crash and winds up off the road a good ways. Will he be rescued? This sort of thing is a nice change of pace from the usual episode.

1.8 

AH is tasting wines and one has arsenic in it (“very good, really, that is if you like a very dry wine”). The episode itself is based on a story by Dorothy Sayers. 

We begin with some bickering between a husband and his cook, Mrs. Sutton. She offers to make him lamb curry for dinner (clearly thumbing her nose at future generations who condescend to 50's cuisine). 

Meanwhile, the newspapers are filled with stories about a murderous housekeeper who is on the loose, and the husband begins to wonder whether Mrs. Sutton is this woman. Did she put arsenic in his cocoa? Great twist ending.

S1, episodes 5 and 6

1.5. 

This is basically The Lady Vanishes (AH says as much in the intro). Hitchcock's daughter Pat stars in an old-fashioned helpless-young-woman role. She's visiting France with her mother, but after returning from fetching medicine for her mom, the hotel staff denies ever having seen either of them. Lots of upper class Brits and shifty Frenchmen here.

So it's all a question of whether the ending makes sense. The explanation turns out to be bat guano crazy, which, IMO, somehow redeems it.

1.6.

The introduction is a bit about the crew trying to kill AH. First line of the episode: “we don’t serve un-escorted ladies at the bar." Ah, the '50s.

This one's a hardboiled story of a desperate woman who had pushed a man into a robbery, leading to his death. Now the man's brother is back but rather than take revenge, they become partners in a dress shop. Nice surprise ending.

Some context to the TV landscape of the time: in the same year, our lead actor Gene Barry also appeared on The Ford Television Theatre, Science Fiction Theatre, Jane Wyman Presents Fireside Theatre, and TV Reader’s Digest. 

S1, episode 4.

This is more like it! Sidney Blackmer gets feature billing. Who? He played Teddy Roosevelt in seven movies and was later the old man in Rosemary’s Baby. 

He's the husband half of an aging couple and he's struggling to find a new job. They can't pay the bills or rent (“we should’ve bought a home”) so they come up with a long term insurance fraud scheme. 

Robert Emhardt (below) is the boldly suspicious insurance investigator. He's used a lot in this series and is always great. 

Some nice period touches: the suits, the hats, the cigarettes, two-cent library book fines, a fox stole. 

S1, episodes 2 and 3

1.2.

AH's introduction is still just standing and talking to the camera - the props are yet to come. We hear the unmistakable voice of John Forsythe narrating this episode. He's our protagonist, a composer/conductor returning from France to his family after four years. Cloris Leachman appears as well. The twist is broader this time.

1.3. 

After two decent episodes, we have to suffer through a lame western-themed one, perhaps the worst of Season 1. AH does his intro with a gun (his first prop). “Precisely why I don’t care for Russian Roulette, I never win.” 

Couple of cowboys in a showdown with a woman innkeeper trying to keep them apart. The accents are comical to contemporary ears and the ending is, for me, dumb. “That was disappointing, wasn’t it," says AH afterwards. Yes, it was.

Season 1, episode 1

The show debuted on October 2, 1955, the Sunday evening of the day in which the Dodgers beat the Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series (they'd win it in seven). 

We see the famous sketch profile of Hitchcock's head and hear Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette. Our host (in black and white, of course) says these are going to be “stories of suspense and mystery.” 

Our first episode, Revenge, is about a young man and wife in a trailer park (but they are not played as trailer trash, as they likely would be today). She's an ex-dancer, recuperating form an injury, and she's attacked while he’s at work. Their neighbor is Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show. 

The whole episode is quiet and slow by today's standards, but it's nice to see the lost art off screen violence. There's a nice twist ending, which is the show's trademark (but not all follow this form). 

After the episode, AH returns to assure us that the bad guy was caught and punished. The Production Code at the time didn't let someone get away with a crime. With episodes of only 25 minutes, they'd often just have Hitchcock clean it up after the fact (as the series progressed, he did so half-heartedly or ironically).

Welcome

This blog accompanies my watching (sometimes re-watching) of the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents Series on Hulu Plus. These are not intended to be reviews, just recaps. Spoiler free.