Alfred Hitchcock Movies

The fourth season of the full-color Alfred Hitchcock Presents revival was also the series' third season on the USA Network -- and the final season in which new episodes were produced (16 in all). This year, only one of the episodes is based on an earlier installment from the first Alfred Hitchcock Presents of the 1950s and '60s; the rest are all originals. The games begin with "The Big Spin," directed by prolific Canadian character actor Al Waxman and starring Erik Estrada as a duplicitous cab driver who gets more than he bargains for when he "borrows" a lottery ticket. Other fourth-season entries include "Don't Sell Yourself Short," with David Soul in fable of Wall Street chicanery with a homicidal twist; "Skeleton in the Closet," a contemporary spin on the 19th century Lizzie Borden murder case; "My Dear Watson," an unofficial sequel to Arthur Conan Doyle's His Last Bow, starring Brian Bedford as Sherlock Holmes; and "Diamonds Aren't Forever," a James Bond takeoff featuring one-time-only "007" actor George Lazenby. The best of the batch, appropriately enough, is a brace of Alfred Hitchcock spoofs: "The Man Who Knew Too Little," starring Lewis Collins as an amnesia victim, and the series finale, "South by Southeast," all about a "lost" Hitchcock script chock-full of instantly recognizable movie references. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Canceled by NBC in 1986, the "new," full-color version of the classic suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents was brought back one year later by the USA network. For its inaugural season on USA, the series served up 13 new half-hour episodes, fleshing out the schedule with reruns from the NBC version. As before, most of the new episodes are actually remakes of stories previously seen on the first incarnation of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with the late Mr. Hitchcock actually introducing them via colorized film clips from the earlier show. These include "Specialty of the House," "Anniversary Gift," "Man on the Edge," and "The World's Oldest Motive." Of the original episodes (original to this revival, that is), highlights included "If the Shoe Fits," with Ted Shackelford in a dual role; "The Impatient Patient," starring frequent Hitchcock collaborator E.G. Marshall as a disgruntled invalid plotting to kill his annoying nurse; and "The Final Twist," featuring Martin Landau in the story of a group of homicidal movie special-effects artists. In addition to the above-mentioned performers, the "star lineup" for season two of Alfred Hitchcock Presents includes Marion Ross, Mark Hamill, Edward Herrmann, Pamela Sue Martin, Samantha Eggar, and Adrian Zmed. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alfred Hitchcock's final film was adapted from Victor Canning's novel The Rainbird Pattern by Ernest Lehman, who previously wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Barbara Harris plays Blanche, a phony psychic, hired by wealthy Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt) to trace the whereabouts of her nephew, who'd been given up for adoption years earlier and who is now heir to a fortune. Blanche's cohort is "investigator" Lumley (Bruce Dern), who is fully prepared to milk the last dollar out of Julia before locating the long-lost nephew. Meanwhile, we are introduced to elegant kidnappers Adamson and Fran (William Devane and Karen Black). The fates of the two couples are inextricably intertwined by the search for the missing heir. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A double agent has to contend with enemies on both sides of the political fence as well as the woman he loves in this thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Prof. Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) is an gifted American physicist who, at the height of the Cold War, decides to defect to East Germany. To his surprise, his fiancée, fellow scientist Sarah Sherman (Julie Andrews) follows him, and she soon discovers Armstrong is no traitor, but acting as a secret undercover agent. As Armstrong attempts to ingratiate himself with political and scientific factions in East Germany, Gromek (Wolfgang Kieling) becomes his guide, though Armstrong is aware he's a government agent assigned to trail him, and as he tries to shake Gromek, Armstrong realizes his new "friend" knows what his real agenda happens to be. Torn Curtain was one of the rare Hitchcock films from his "classic" era which did not feature a score by Bernard Herrman; due to objections from his studio, Hitchcock removed Herrman from the project, though excerpts from the score he had begun were included as a bonus on the film's DVD release in 2002. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Condemned as being a "disappointing" and "unworthy" Alfred Hitchcock effort at the time of its release, Marnie has since grown in stature; it is still considered a lesser Hitchcock, but a fascinating one. Tippi Hedren plays Marnie, a compulsive thief who cannot stand to be touched by any man. She also goes bonkers over the sight of the color red. Her new boss, Mark Rutland (Sean Connery) is intrigued by Marnie -- to such an extent that he blackmails her into marriage when he stumbles onto her breaking into his safe. Rutland is in his own way as "sick" as his wife because of his fetishist desire to cohabit with a thief. After innumerable plot twists and turns, Marnie is "cured" by a facile but mesmerizing flashback sequence involving her ex-hooker mother (Louise Latham). Among the critical carps aimed at Marnie was the complaint that the studio-bound sets -- particularly the waterfront locale where the film ends -- were tacky and artificial; curiously, this seeming "carelessness" adds to the queasy, off-setting mood that Hitchcock endeavored to sustain. Even when the direction seems to falter, the film is buoyed by the driving musical score of Bernard Herrmann (his last for Hitchcock). Among the supporting actors in Marnie are Mariette Hartley as a secretary and Bruce Dern as a sailor; twelve years later, Dern would star in Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Season nine of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (formerly the half-hour Alfred Hitchcock Presents) represented the first season without an episode directed by series host Alfred Hitchcock, who was otherwise occupied with his upcoming theatrical feature, Marnie. Thus, instead of the traditional Hitch-directed opener, the ninth season got under way with "A Home Away from Home" -- which, even without the direct input of The Master, turned out be one of the series' most terrifying efforts. In fact, several of this season's episodes rank as among the finest and most frightening ever seen on any TV anthology. Examples include "The Jar, a chilling Ray Bradbury fable featuring a astonishingly sinister performance by comic actor Pat Buttram, a superb minimalist musical score by Bernard Herrmann, and the knowing direction of longtime Hitchcock associate Norman Lloyd; "Final Escape," a grimly claustrophobic morality tale, and an unusual assignment for director William Witney, hitherto a specialist in fast-action Westerns; and "The Evil of Adelaide Winters," highlighted by the subtly macabre performance of Kim Hunter and the direction of Laslo Benedek (The Wild One). Other episodes included "The Magic Shop," adapted by fantasy specialist John Collier from the H.G. Wells short story, and marking the return to the series of director Robert Stevens after several years' absence; "Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale," a typically low-key "perfect murder" yarn by Richard Levinson and William Link (Columbo); "The Sign of Satan," a felicitous collaboration between horror star Christopher Lee and author Robert Bloch (Psycho); and "Body in the Barn," featuring the indomitable Lillian Gish as a meddling gossip who manages to trap a killer by sacrificing her own life. Finally, season nine offers one of the series' funniest episodes, "How to Get Rid of Your Wife," distinguished by the one-time-only teaming of comedian Bob Newhart and former child star Jane Withers. Seen on Friday evenings at 10 p.m., The Alfred Hitchcock Hour performed better in the ratings than its chief competition, The Jack Paar Program, but in general the hour-long anthology format was tired and played out by 1964. Still, Hitchcock enjoyed enough of a following to prompt NBC -- which had dropped the series back in 1962 -- to pick up Alfred Hitchcock Hour for a tenth season, moving the property to a more advantageous Monday-night slot. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After two years on NBC, the long-running suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents returned to its original stamping grounds, CBS, for its eighth season on the air. Only it wasn't Alfred Hitchcock Presents anymore: responding to a then-current industry trend, the series had expanded from 30 to 60 minutes per week, and had been rechristened The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Not only did this provide the series' production staff with the opportunity to do longer, more complex and more in-depth stories, but it also allowed host Alfred Hitchcock to make three between-the-acts appearances per episode, rather than just two. Moving into its new 10 p.m. Thursday slot in the fall of 1962, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour kicked off its eighth season with "A Piece of the Action," starring veteran Gig Young and relative newcomer Robert Redford, and directed by frequent series contributor Bernard Girard. Former Hitchcock contractee Vera Miles, who has headlined the series' very first half-hour episode, "Revenge," back in 1955, returned to star in the second hour-long entry, "Don't Look Behind You," helmed by John Brahm. As for Hitchcock, his only directorial foray this season is the fourth episode, the Rashomon-like "I Saw the Whole Thing." It would be the last of the series' Hitchcock-directed installments; thereafter, The Master confined his TV activity to his hosting and story-editor duties, reserving his directorial energies to such theatrical features as The Birds and Marnie.

Highlights of the series' inaugural one-hour season include "Captive Audience" and "Dear Uncle George," a brace of "perfect-murder" yarns penned by Richard Levinson and William Link of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote fame; "The Black Curtain," adapted from Cornell Woolrich's famous whodunit; "Ride the Nightmare," scripted by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the episode The Thirty-First of February" under the nom de plume of "Logan Swanson"; "Diagnosis: Danger," directed by Sydney Pollack, who had previously worked on the series as an actor; "The Long Silence," co-authored by Charles Beaumont; and "Death of a Cop," written by veteran Hollywood scenarist Leigh Brackett, whose film credits ranged from The Big Sleep to The Empire Strikes Back. In the tradition of the previous season's "Bang, You're Dead," season eight offers another "serious" episode, in which Hitchcock foregoes the traditional humorous epilogue to deliver a straightforward cautionary message about an all-too-real social problem. In this case, the problem is alcoholism, and the episode in question is "Hangover," co-written by mystery author John D. MacDonald and co-starring Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield. After a shaky start opposite the high-rated NBC variety series The Andy Williams Show, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour moved from Thursday to Friday evenings in January of 1963, where it fared somewhat better opposite the flagging 77 Sunset Strip and the low-rated satirical series That Was the Week That Was. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The seventh season of the suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents rather surprisingly did not open with an episode directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself, but instead with "The Hat Box," directed by frequent series contributor Alan Crosland Jr. In fact, Hitch helmed only one episode this season -- but it was a knockout. "Bang, You're Dead," starring child actor Billy Mumy as a lonely youngster who gets hold of a loaded gun, is one of the few series episodes in which host Alfred Hitchcock eschews his traditional humorous epilogue, instead delivering a solemn plea for better and more efficient gun control. The bulk of the season's episodes are directed by such "regulars" as Norman Lloyd and Paul Henreid. New additions to the directorial docket include John Newland, fresh from three seasons on the paranormal anthology One Step Beyond, whose best season-seven effort is "Bad Actor," starring a young Robert Duvall as the homicidal title character. Also showing up in the Hitchcock director's chair this season is former Broadway leading man Richard Whorf, a year away from his long directorial association on the popular sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. One of the seventh-season episodes was deemed too gruesome for network play, and was never shown on NBC; however, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," depicting a fateful three-way confrontation between a retarded youth (Brandon de Wilde), a cheating wife (Diana Dors), and an electric buzz saw, was subsequently included in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents syndicated package, and has since popped up frequently on the public-domain home-video market. In its second year on NBC's Tuesday-night schedule, Alfred Hitchcock Presents continued to languish in the ratings, a dilemma attributed to its powerhouse competition on CBS (Dobie Gillis) and the fact that the half-hour anthology format was on its last legs. Thus, when the series returned for its eighth season, it had returned to its original network, CBS, and expanded to a full 60 minutes per week. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Inveterate gambler Sheridan (played by Ed Gardner of Duffy's Tavern fame) is convinced that his recent streak of luck is due to the power of prayer. Accordingly, Sheridan contributes heavily to the church-repair fund of neighborhood priest Father Amian (Claude Rains). Hoping to further extend his generosity, Gardner tips the father off to a "sure thing" in an upcoming race -- and against his better judgment, Father Amian hands over 500 dollars in church funds for Gardner to bet at the track. In the end, the "sure thing" loses -- but the church still comes out the winner. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel (hardly a common moment in a major studio film in 1960), Psycho announced that it was taking the audience to places it had never been before, and on that score what followed would hardly disappoint. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is unhappy in her job at a Phoenix, Arizona real estate office and frustrated in her romance with hardware store manager Sam Loomis (John Gavin). One afternoon, Marion is given $40,000 in cash to be deposited in the bank. Minutes later, impulse has taken over and Marion takes off with the cash, hoping to leave Phoenix for good and start a new life with her purloined nest egg. 36 hours later, paranoia and exhaustion have started to set in, and Marion decides to stop for the night at the Bates Motel, where nervous but personable innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cheerfully mentions that she's the first guest in weeks, before he regales her with curious stories about his mother. There's hardly a film fan alive who doesn't know what happens next, but while the shower scene is justifiably the film's most famous sequence, there are dozens of memorable bits throughout this film. The first of a handful of sequels followed in 1983, while Gus Van Sant's controversial remake, starring Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche, appeared in 1998. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

While having lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York, advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) has the bad luck to call for a messenger just as a page goes out for a "George Kaplan." From that moment, Thornhill finds that he has stepped into a nightmare -- he is quietly abducted by a pair of armed men out of the hotel's famous Oak Room and transported to a Long Island estate; there, he is interrogated by a mysterious man (James Mason) who, believing that Roger is George Kaplan, demands to know what he knows about his business and how he has come to acquire this knowledge. Roger, who knows nothing about who any of these people are, can do nothing but deny that he is Kaplan or that he knows what they're talking about. Finally, his captors force a bottle of bourbon into Roger and put him behind the wheel of a car on a dangerous downhill stretch. Through sheer luck and the intervention of a police patrol car and its driver (John Beradino), Roger survives the ride and evades his captors, and is booked for drunk driving. He's unable to persuade the court, the county detectives, or even his own mother (Jesse Royce Landis) of the truth of his story, however -- Thornhill returns with them to the mansion where he was held, only to find any incriminating evidence cleaned up and to learn that the owner of the house is a diplomat, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober), assigned to the United Nations. He backtracks to the hotel to find the room of the real George Kaplan, only to discover that no one at the hotel has ever actually seen the man. With his kidnappers once again pursuing him, Thornhill decides to confront Townsend at the United Nations, only to discover that he knows nothing of the events on Long Island, or his house being occupied -- but before he can learn more, Townsend gets a knife in his back in full view of 50 witnesses who believe that Roger did it. Now on the run from a murder charge, complete with a photograph of him holding the weapon plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country, Thornhill tries to escape via train -- there he meets the cooly beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who twice hides him from the police, once spontaneously and a second time in a more calculated rendezvous in her compartment that gets the two of them together romantically, at least for the night. By the next day, he's off following a clue to a remote rural highway, where he is attacked by an armed crop-dusting plane, one of the most famous scenes in Hitchcock's entire film output. Thornhill barely survives, but he does manage to learn that his mysterious tormentor/interrogator is named Phillip Vandamm, and that he goes under the cover of being an art dealer and importer/exporter, and that Eve is in bed with him in every sense of the phrase -- or is she? ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

One of the true classics of suspense fiction, Rupert Croft-Cooke's short story Banquo's Chair had been adapted for radio and television innumerable times before it was given the Alfred Hitchcock touch in this unforgettable episode. John Williams plays Scotland Yard inspector Brent, who is determined to prove that John Bedford (Kenneth Haigh) is the murderer of one Miss Ferguson. Unfortunately, every effort to break Bedford down has failed, forcing Brent to take drastic measures. Hiring an actress (Hilda Plowright) who looks just like the late Miss Ferguson, the inspector stages a scene whereby the smug Bedford will be confronted by the "ghost" of his victim -- and will thus be so unnerved that he will confess on the spot. Needless to say, the scheme doesn't quite yield the results that Inspector Brent had expected. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This poignant playlet is based on a story by A.E.W. Mason, of The Four Feathers fame. After the death of her husband in a freak mountain accident in Switzerland, Stella Ballister (Patricia Owens) solemnly vows to remain faithful to her spouse's memory. Twenty years pass, and throughout all that time Stella refuses to marry, or even to fall in love again. Only when her husband's body turns up perfectly preserved in a glacier does Stella realize that her loyalty was all for naught. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Season four of Alfred Hitchcock Presents gets under way with "Poison," directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself, adapted from a story by Roald Dahl, and starring Wendell Corey, who'd been one of the leads in Hitch's 1954 theatrical feature Rear Window. The only other episode helmed personally by Hitchcock this season is "Banquo's Chair," based on an oft-dramatized Rupert Croft-Cooke short story and featuring another Hitchcock "regular," John Williams. Emmy-winning director Robert Stevens continued turning out first-rate work during the series' fourth season, as did Paul Henreid, whose credits this year include "Out There: Darkness," starring Henreid's Now, Voyager co-star Bette Davis. Newcomers to the series' directorial roster included Norman Lloyd, who as an actor had appeared in Hitchcock's 1940s features Saboteur and Notorious, and who had been on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents production staff since the previous season. The best examples of Lloyd's output this year are "Safety for the Witness," starring Art Carney in one of his first post-Honeymooners acting assignments, and "Human Interest Story," one of the series' rare forays into the realm of science fiction, with Steve McQueen in the leading role. The stiff competition of NBC's Dinah Shore Chevy Show caused Alfred Hitchcock Presents to suffer a ratings dip during its fourth season, though the series managed to end the year as America's most popular filmed dramatic anthology. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This first episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents' fourth season is adapted from a short story by Roald Dahl, with a new climactic twist added by veteran screenwriter Casey Robinson (Kings Row, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, etc.). James Donald plays Harry Pope, a hard-drinking, racially bigoted plantation owner living in the jungles of India. Late one night, Pope feels something moving in his bed. Terrified, he summons his overseer, Timber Woods (Wendell Corey), telling him that a huge, poisonous snake is sleeping right on his chest. With delicious irony, Woods engages the services of a native doctor (Arnold Moss) to save Pope's life. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The third season of the suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents broke with tradition by opening up with an episode not directed by series creator-host Alfred Hitchcock. Instead, Robert Stevens helmed the brilliant "The Glass Eye," which not only earned an Emmy award for Stevens but also provided an early opportunity for a 27-year-old Canadian actor named William Shatner. However, Hitchcock was amply represented via his directorial work on three other episodes this season. "The Perfect Crime" stands as the one and only collaboration between Hitch and horror-film icon Vincent Price. "A Dip in the Pool," starring Keenan Wynn as a luckless gambler, is one of several playlets based on the works of Roald Dahl. And the best Hitchcock-directed episode of the third season is another Dahl derivation, the unforgettable "Lamb to the Slaughter," wherein harried housewife Barbara Bel Geddes literally cooks up a novel method to dispose of the weapon she uses to bludgeon her husband to death. (Outside the realm of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hitchcock also contributed this season to a new hour-long anthology, Suspicion.) The remaining third-season installments boast an impressive array of directorial talent. Actor Paul Henreid held the reins for such episodes as "The Silent Witness," "Impromptu Murder," and "The Diplomatic Corpse," the last-named featuring Henreid's Casablanca co-star Peter Lorre. Arthur Hiller, whose later film credits included The Out-of-Towners, Love Story, and Silver Streak, called the shots on such superior third-season Alfred Hitchcock entries as "Post Mortem." And "The Young One," an episode designed to showcase new leading lady Carol Lynley, was directed by none other than Robert Altman. Alfred Hitchcock Presents wrapped up its third season as America's second most popular TV anthology (General Electric Theater was first), ranking in 12th place in the overall ratings. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this delightfully macabre episode stars Vincent Price as Charles Courtney, a brilliant and pompous detective who takes pride in the fact that he has never made a wrong decision in his career. Courtney has celebrated this winning streak with a well-stocked trophy room, containing a blank space reserved for "The Perfect Crime" -- just in case a crime comes along that he is unable to solve. Unfortunately, attorney John Gregory (James Gregory) shows up one day with irrefutable evidence that Courtney has condemned an innocent man to death. After absorbing this shock, Courtney recovers sufficiently to create an unusual monument for his trophy room -- with the "help" of the hapless Mr. Gregory. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The debate still rages as to whether Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much is superior to his own original 1934 version. This two-hour remake (45 minutes longer than the first film) features more stars, a lusher budget, and the plaintive music of Bernard Herrmann (who appears on-camera, typecast as a symphony conductor). Though the locale of the opening scenes shifts from Switzerland to French Morocco in the newer version, the basic plot remains the same. American tourists James Stewart and Doris Day are witness to the street killing of a Frenchman (Daniel Gelin) they've recently befriended. Before breathing his last, the murder victim whispers a secret to Stewart (the Cinemascope lens turns this standard closeup into a truly grotesque vignette). Stewart knows that a political assassination will occur during a concert at London's Albert Hall, but is unable to tell the police: his son (a daughter in the original) has been kidnapped by foreign agents to insure Stewart's silence. The original script for Man Who Knew too Much was expanded and updated by John Michael Hayes and Angus McPhail. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Director Alfred Hitchcock lets us know from the outset that The Wrong Man is a painfully true story and not one of his customary fabricated suspense yarns, through the simple expedient of walking before the camera and telling us as much (this introductory appearance replaced his planned cameo role as a nightclub patron). The real-life protagonist, musican Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero, is played by Henry Fonda. Happily married and gainfully employed at the Stork Club, Balestrero's life takes a disastrous turn when he goes to an insurance office, hoping to borrow on his wife's (Vera Miles) life insurance policy in order to pay her dental bills. One of the girls in the office spots Balestrero, identifying him as the man who robbed the office a day or so earlier. This, and a few scattered bits of circumstantial evidence, lead to Balestrero's arrest. Though he's absolutely innocent, he can offer no proof of his whereabouts the day of the crime. Lawyer Frank O'Connor (Anthony Quayle) does his best to help his client, but he's up against an indifferent judicial system that isn't set up to benefit the "little man". Meanwhile, Balestrero's wife becomes emotionally unhinged, leading to a complete nervous breakdown. As Balestrero prays in his cell, his image is juxtaposed onto the face of the actual criminal-who looks nothing like the accused man! Utilizing one of his favorite themes-the helplessness of the innocent individual when confronted by the faceless bureaucracy of the Law-Hitchcock weaves a nightmarish tale, all the more frightening because it really happened (the film's best moment: Fonda looking around the nearly empty courtroom during his arraignment, realizing that the rest of the world cares precisely nothing about his inner torment). Hitch enhances the film's versimilitude by shooting in the actual locations where the real story occured. His only concession to Hollywood formula was the half-hearted coda, assuring us that Mrs. Balestrero eventually recovered from her mental collapse (she sure doesn't look any too healthy the last time we see her!) Watch for uncredited appearances by Harry Dean Stanton, Bonnie Franklin, Tuesday Weld and Charles Aidman. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Who better to direct an affectionate spoof of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 suspense classic Rear Window than Hitchcock himself? Babs Fenton (Mary Scott), a housewife with a highly fertile imagination, wonders just what is going on between Mr. and Mrs. Blanchard (Dayton Lummis, Meg Mundy) in the house next door. By and by, Babs becomes convinced that Mr. Blanchard has murdered his wife, and inveigles her own long-suffering husband John (Robert Horton) into playing detective. The clues, motive, and opportunity are all there -- but the outcome isn't quite what Babs had anticipated. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Wealthy Walter Pelham (Tom Ewell) finds out that someone is going around impersonating him. Hoping to foil his "double," Pelham goes to great and strenuous lengths, changing his own appearance, his personal habits and quirks, and even his handwriting. Unfortunately, the impostor always seems to be one step ahead of Mr. Pelham -- and it looks as the though the phony will be successful in completely taking over the life of the genuine article. "The Case of Mr. Pelham" is one of a handful of Alfred Hitchcock Presents installments directed by Hitchcock himself. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alfred Hitchcock's second directorial effort for his popular suspense anthology is one of the series' best ever episodes. Joseph Cotten stars as William Callew, a hard-nosed and hard-hearted businessman who holds in contempt such human failings as sentiment, pity, and tears. While racing to keep an appointment in New York, Callew is involved in a spectacular car accident. Awakening, he finds that he is completely paralyzed, unable to move or speak -- though we hear his every thought on the soundtrack. Everyone who comes across Callew assumes that he is dead, including the police and the coroner...and as the episode draws to its conclusion, the horrified Callew is being wheeled into the autopsy room of the morgue! "Breakdown" was re-filmed for the 1985 revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with John Heard in the Joseph Cotten role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The first major Hollywood film director to venture into the world of series television, Alfred Hitchcock hosted this long-running dramatic anthology, which was seen on two different networks for ten seasons beginning October 2, 1955. While Hitchcock's films were generally suspense thrillers or romantic melodramas, most of the playlets on Alfred Hitchcock Presents were macabre character studies and mysteries with twist endings. The stories, written by the talented likes of Roald Dahl, Cornell Woolrich, Francis Cockrell, Henry Slesar, and Robert Bloch, trafficked heavily in faithless spouses, world-weary blackmailers, neurotic "innocents" trapped in horrible circumstances, and meticulous murderers who tirelessly plotted "the perfect crime." Intoning his trademarked "Good e-v-ening," the cherubic Hitchcock would appear at the beginning of each episode in a wryly humorous prologue setting up the basic situation, with occasional barbs at the intrusions of his sponsors' commercials, and would return for the epilogue to tie up loose plot ends, make a few more comical observations, and bid the audiences a fond "Good night." In those episodes in which the criminal or murderer seemingly got away with his or her crimes scot-free, Hitchcock would show up at the end to calmly assure the viewer -- and the network censors -- that justice had eventually been meted out and the villain had been punished, though no one was really fooled by these cynical codas. When the series expanded from 30 to 60 minutes at the outset of its eighth season, Hitchcock added a third appearance per episode just before station break, in which he would generally rip his sponsor for the "tiresome" advertisements to follow. All of these act breaks were written without screen credit by James Allardice, who'd been instructed in the satirical approach he was supposed to take via compulsory screenings of Hitch's 1955 black comedy theatrical feature The Trouble with Harry.

Since he was still quite busy with his film career throughout the run of his TV series, Hitchcock himself directed a mere handful of the half-hour programs, and only one of the hour-long episodes. Arguably the best and most famous of Hitchcock's TV directorial efforts was the third-season "Lamb to the Slaughter," in which a housewife murders her cheating husband with a frozen leg of lamb -- and then cooks up and serves the "evidence" to the unwitting police investigators. The talent roster on Alfred Hitchcock Presents including several of The Master's movie colleagues, among them actors Vera Miles, John Forsythe, Judith Evelyn, John Williams, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Edmund Gwenn, Oscar Homolka, Barbara Bel Geddes, Bruce Dern, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Mildred Natwick, Herbert Marshall, Ray Milland, and musical composer Bernard Herrmann. Norman Lloyd, who had appeared as the slimy title character in Hitch's 1942 feature Saboteur, directed and produced a number of episodes. Other frequent directors included Robert Stevens, Paul Henreid, Arthur Hiller, Boris Sagal, and John Brahm. The series was executive-produced by Joan Harrison (who had started her career as Hitchcock's secretary in 1933) and utilized Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette as its theme music.

Seen on CBS for its first five seasons, Alfred Hitchcock Presents moved to NBC for its sixth and seventh years on the air, then back to CBS in 1962, when the series was reformatted as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The program was brought back to NBC for its tenth and final season, which ended in September of 1965. Twenty years later, Alfred Hitchcock Presents was revived for a four-season run on both NBC and the USA cable network. Though Hitchcock had died in 1980, he remained a presence on the series via colorized reruns of his original opening and closing remarks -- a rather ghoulish creative decision that Hitch might well have approved of. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on the popular mystery play by Frederick Knott, Dial M For Murder is more talky and stagebound than most Hitchcock films, but no less enjoyable. British tennis pro Ray Milland suspects that his wealthy wife Grace Kelly is fooling around with handsome American Robert Cummings. Milland blackmails a disgraced former army comrade (Anthony Dawson) into murdering Kelly and making it look like the work of a burglar. But Milland's carefully mapped-out scheme does not take into account the notion that Kelly might fight back and kill her assailant. When the police (represented by John Williams) investigate, Milland improvises quickly, subtly planting the suggestion that his wife has committed first-degree murder. He almost gets away with it; to tell you more would spoil the fun of the film's final thirty minutes. Hitchcock claimed that he chose this single-set play because he was worn out from several earlier, more ambitious projects, and wanted to "recharge his batteries." Compelled by Warner Bros. to film Dial M for Murder in 3-D, Hitchcock perversely refused to throw in the standard in-your-face gimmickry of most stereoscopic films of the era--though watch how he visually emphasizes an important piece of evidence towards the end of the film. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on the turn-of-the-century play Our Two Consciences by Paul Anthelme, Hitchcock's I Confess is set in Quebec. Montgomery Clift plays a priest who hears the confession of church sexton O.E. Hasse. "I...killed...a man" whispers Hasse in tight closeup--and, bound by the laws of the Confessional, Clift is unable to turn Hasse over to the police. But police-inspector Karl Malden has a pretty good idea who the guilty party is: all evidence points to Clift. It seems that the dead man had been blackmailing Anne Baxter, who was once in a factually innocent, but seemingly exploitable compromising position with Clift. Tried for murder, Clift is released due to lack of evidence, but he is ruined in the eyes of the community. Then it is Hasse's turn to make that One Fatal Error. I Confess is frequently dismissed as a lesser Hitchcock, due mainly to the quirky performance of Montgomery Clift (who, it is said, steadfastly refused to take direction). Today, four decades removed from its on-set intrigues, the film has taken its place as one of the best of Hitchcock's "between the classics" efforts. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Stage Fright toys with our notions of the dividing line between reality and artifice by being set in the London theatre world. On the lam from the police, Richard Todd takes refuge in the home of his former girlfriend, RADA student Jane Wyman. Todd has been spotted fleeing the scene of a murder, but he insists that he's innocent. Wyman believes his story, but knows that the police won't, so she decides to play detective herself. She also plays several other roles in a variety of disguises so as to escape the notice of genuine detective Michael Wilding. Top-billed Marlene Dietrich plays a Dietrich-like chanteuse whom Wyman pigeonholes as the real murderer. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Rope, Alfred Hitchcock's first color film, was adapted from Patrick Hamilton's stage play Rope's End by no less than Hume Cronyn. Loosely inspired by the Leopold-Loeb case, the plot concerns two implicitly homosexual college chums, played by Farley Granger and John Dall. Their heads filled with Nietzschean philosophy by their kindly professor James Stewart, Granger and Dall kill a third friend just for the thrill of it. The boys hide the body in an antique chest in the middle of their posh apartment, then perversely arrange to hold a dinner party around the chest, inviting the victim's family, friends and fiancee (Joan Chandler), as well as their intellectual role-model Stewart. As the guests wander obliviously around the sealed chest, the killers make snippy, veiled comments about their deed--never going so far as to reveal the existence of the body nor their involvement in the murder. As all the guests file out, however, professor Stewart begins to suspect that something is amiss. In Rope, Hitchcock attempted the daunting technical challenge of filming the entire picture in one long, seemingly uninterrupted take. Actually, there are several edits in the movie: since a reel of film was divided into two ten-minute minireels back in 1948, the internal reel-breaks are "fudged" by having a dark object briefly obscure the camera lens, sustaining the illusion that no editing has taken place. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Though Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious was produced by David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films, Selznick himself had little to do with the production, which undoubtedly pleased the highly independent Hitchcock. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, who goes to hell in a handbasket after her father, an accused WWII traitor, commits suicide. American secret agent Devlin (Cary Grant) is ordered to enlist the libidinous Alicia's aid in trapping Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), the head of a Brazilian neo-Nazi group. Openly contemptuous of Alicia despite her loyalty to the American cause, Devlin calmly instructs her to woo and wed Sebastian, so that that good guys will have an "inside woman" to monitor the Nazi chieftain's activities. It is only after Alicia and Sebastian are married that Devlin admits to himself that he's fallen in love with her. The "MacGuffin" in this case is a cache of uranium ore, hidden somewhere on Sebastian's estate. Upon discovering that his wife is a spy, Sebastian balks at eliminating her until ordered to do so by his virago of a mother (Madame Konstantin). Tension mounts to a fever pitch as Devlin, a day late and several dollars short, strives to rescue Alicia from Sebastian's homicidal designs. Of the several standout sequences, the film's highlight is an extended love scene between Alicia and Devlin, which manages to ignite the screen while still remaining scrupulously within the edicts of the Production Code. In later years, Hitchcock never tired of relating the story of how he and screenwriter Ben Hecht (who was nominated for an Oscar) fell under the scrutiny of the FBI after electing to use uranium as a plot device -- this before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A huge moneymaker for everyone concerned, Notorious remains one of Hitchcock's best espionage melodramas. In 1992, Notorious was remade for cable television; it goes without saying that the original is vastly superior. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alfred Hitchcock's particular contribution to the War effort consisted of two French-language short subjects, slated to be distributed in France after the Liberation. The first film was Bon Voyage; the second was Aventure Malgache. In the latter film, Paris' Moliere Players enact a thrilling tale of the French Resistance. The fact-based story concerns Claurousse, who boldly operated on behalf of the Underground in Nazi-occupied Madagascar. Sent to prison by the Vichy government, Claurousse is rescued by the British, and is thus able to continue tweaking Hitler's nose. As in his previous Murder and his later Stage Fright, Hitchcock seems delighted with the opportunity to combine the specialized world of the theater with the more treacherous terrain of intrigue. Long available only for archival showings, Aventure Malgache was released to videotape in the mid-1980s, often in tandem with Bon Voyage. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A young Alfred Hitchcock made this propaganda film as an homage to the courageous members of the French Resistance as he tells the tale of a British RAF pilot who escapes from France with the assistance of the French Underground and a treacherous Nazi informer. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Wealthy, sheltered Joan Fontaine is swept off her feet by charming ne'er-do-well Cary Grant. Though warned that Grant is little more than a fortune-hunter, Fontaine marries him anyway. She remains loyal to her irresponsible husband as he plows his way from one disreputable business scheme to another. Gradually, Fontaine comes to the conclusion that Grant intends to do away with her in order to collect her inheritance...a suspicion confirmed when Grant's likeable business partner Nigel Bruce dies under mysterious circumstances. To his dying day, Hitchcock insisted that he wanted to retain the novelist Francis Iles' original ending, but that the RKO executives intervened. Fontaine won an Academy Award for her work. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Fourteen scriptwriters spent five years toiling over a movie adaptation of war correspondent Vincent Sheehan's Personal History before producer Walter Wanger brought the property to the screen as Foreign Correspondent. What emerged was approximately 2 parts Sheehan and 8 parts director Alfred Hitchcock--and what's wrong with that? Joel McCrea stars as an American journalist sent by his newspaper to cover the volatile war scene in Europe in the years 1938 to 1940. He has barely arrived in Holland before he witnesses the assassination of Dutch diplomat Albert Basserman: at least, that's what he thinks he sees. McCrea makes the acquaintance of peace-activist Herbert Marshall, his like-minded daughter Laraine Day, and cheeky British secret agent George Sanders. A wild chase through the streets of Amsterdam, with McCrea dodging bullets, leads to the classic "alternating windmills" scene, which tips Our Hero to the existence of a formidable subversive organization. McCrea returns to England, where he nearly falls victim to the machinations of jovial hired-killer Edmund Gwenn. The leader of the spy ring is revealed during the climactic plane-crash sequence--which, like the aforementioned windmill scene, is a cinematic tour de force for director Hitchcock and cinematographer Rudolph Mate. Producer Wanger kept abreast of breaking news events all through the filming of Foreign Correspondent, enabling him to keep the picture as "hot" as possible: the final scene, with McCrea broadcasting to a "sleeping" America from London while Nazi bombs drop all around him, was filmed only a short time after the actual London blitz. The script was co-written by Robert Benchley, who has a wonderful supporting role as an eternally tippling newsman. Foreign Correspondent was Alfred Hitchcock's second American film, and remained one of his (and his fans') personal favorites. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alfred Hitchcock directed this disappointing misfire, memorable solely for the fact is that it is the final film from Hitchcock's early British period before he left for the Hollywood studio system and David O. Selznick. In the England of the 1800s, a group of ruthless smugglers, led by Sir Humphrey Pengallon (Charles Laughton), prey on ships by blacking out warning signals. When the ships crash on the rocks, the nefarious group loots the remains and kills the sailors. The plot kicks in when the beautiful orphan Mary Yelland (Maureen O'Hara) goes to visit her uncle Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks) at a creepy hotel called the Jamaica Inn, the home of the gang of smugglers. Mary doesn't realize that Uncle Joss is one of them. Meanwhile, Lloyd's of London sends one of their ablest men, Jem Trahearne (Robert Newton), to investigate the recurring shipwrecks. Jem checks in to the Jamaica Inn, and when the coven of smugglers finds out who he is, they capture him and attempt to kill him. But Mary comes to his rescue and saves him. Through the inn, the smugglers try to recapture Jem -- along with Mary. Thrown together by dire circumstances, the two fall in love. Meanwhile, all the shenanigans occurring at the Jamaica Inn appear to be driving Pengallon insane. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

As early as 1937's Young and Innocent, Alfred Hitchcock was beginning to repeat himself, but audiences didn't mind so long as they were thoroughly entertaining-which they were, without fail. Derrick De Marney finds himself in a 39 Steps situation when he is wrongly accused of murder. While a fugitive from the law, De Marney is helped by heroine Nova Pilbeam, who three years earlier had played the adolescent kidnap victim in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. The obligatory "fish out of water" scene, in which the principals are briefly slowed down by a banal everyday event, occurs during a child's birthday party. The actual villain, whose identity is never in doubt (Hitchcock made thrillers, not mysteries) is played by George Curzon, who suffers from a twitching eye. Curzon's revelation during an elaborate nightclub sequence is a Hitchcockian tour de force, the sort of virtuoso sequence taken for granted in these days of flexible cameras and computer enhancement, but which in 1937 took a great deal of time, patience and talent to pull off. Released in the US as The Girl Was Young, Young and Innocent was based on a novel by Josephine Tey. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on the novels of W. Somerset Maugham, The Secret Agent is the second in a trilogy of Alfred Hitchcock spy movies (along with The 39 Steps and Sabotage). Set during WWI, John Gielgud plays British novelist Edgar Brodie who discovers that a government agency has faked his own death. He is then given orders to go to Switzerland to kill a German agent. He goes by the name of Richard Ashenden and travels with secret agent Elsa Carrington (Madeleine Carroll), who poses as his wife. Richard joins professional killer the General (Peter Lorre) to look for clues, which leads them to suspect the tourist Caypor (Percy Marmont). Elsa occupies Caypor's wife, Florence Kahn, while Richard and the General attempt to complete their mission during a climbing trip in the Alps. It turns out he was the wrong man, so the spies reluctantly start another search for clues that leads them to the American charmer Robert Marvin (Robert Young). Unfortunately, he has just boarded a train to Greece with Elsa, so they have to get onboard and warn her. The situation is complicated with an air attack, where several key players meet their fate. The Secret Agent marked a rare instance where Hitchcock was pressured into changing the ending from the more grim original. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

The first film version of The Man Who Knew too Much proved to be the international "breakthrough" film for British director Alfred Hitchcock, transforming him from merely a talented domestic filmmaker to a worldwide household name. While vacationing in Switzerland, Britons Leslie Banks and Edna Best befriend jovial Frenchman Pierre Fresnay. Not long afterward, Fresnay is murdered. He whispers a secret in Banks' ear before expiring. This is witnessed by several sinister foreign agents, who kidnap Banks' daughter Nova Pilbeam to keep him from revealing what he knows: That a diplomat will be assassinated during a concert at London's Albert Hall. Unable to turn to the police, Banks desperately attempts to rescue his child himself, still hoping to prevent the assassination. The film's now-famous setpieces include the "Siege of Sidney Street" re-creation and the climactic clash of cymbals at Albert Hall, followed by the crucial scream of Edna Best. German film star Peter Lorre made his English-speaking debut in The Man Who Knew Too Much, though he was still monolingual in 1934 and had to learn his lines phonetically. Written by A. R. Rawlinson, Charles Bennett, D.B. Wyndham Lewis, Emlyn Williams and Edwin Greenwood (an impressive lineup for a 75-minute film!), Man Who Knew Too Much was remade by Hitchcock himself in 1956. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This early Hitchcock effort is a parody of the thriller genre about a transient (Leon M. Lion) who accidentally discovers the hideout of a gang of jewel thieves. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

This uncharacteristic Alfred Hitchcock endeavor was adapted by Hitch and his wife, Alma Reville, from a play by John Galsworthy. The British countryside turns into an ideological battlefield when Hornblower (Edmund Gwenn), a wealthy, self-man tradesman, stakes his claim to a piece of valuable forest property controlled for literally centuries by the "landed gentry." The local squire (C.V. France) and his wife (Helen Haye) dig in their heels and refuse to acknowledge Hornblower's presence -- how dare he use mere money to challenge the rights of blood? Their genteel snobbery is every bit as obnoxious as Hornblower's brash effrontery, and the result is a film with virtually no heroes or villains whatever. Never in any future film did Hitchcock ever lobby so strong an attack on the smug implacability of the aristocracy -- perhaps wisely, since The Skin Game proved to be one of his least-successful films. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In emulation of such "all-talking, all-singing, all-star" Hollywood extravaganzas as The Show of Shows and Hollywood Revue of 1929, Britain's Elstree Studios served up its own big-budget revue, Elstree Calling, in early 1930. This plotless melange of musical numbers and "Heavens My Husband!" comedy sketches rises or falls on the merits of the individual stars. Among the Elstree contractees taking part herein are Will Fyffe, Tommy Handley, Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, and Lily Morris, together with such British International Pictures "regulars" as Anna May Wong and Gordon Harker. The tenor of the production can be measured by the scene in which the exotically beautiful Ms. Wong participates in a Keystone-style pie-throwing sequence. According to the film's credits, Alfred Hitchcock was responsible for "sketches and other interpolated items," reportedly taking over direction of the film when Adrian Brunuel was fired; other sources adamantly deny that Hitchcock had anything at all to do with the film. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film utilized the new sound technology in a rather creative way off-camera. Hitchcock's lead actress, Anny Ondra, had a strong Eastern European accent that was difficult for English audiences to understand, so Hitchcock's solution was to have British actress Joan Barry speak Ondra's lines of dialogue off-camera. The film concerns a woman who kills a man who tries to assault her. Ondra plays Alice White who, while having dinner in a fancy English nightspot with her husband-to-be Scotland Yard Detective Frank Webber (John Longden), begins to flirt with an artist (Cyril Richard) seated at the next table. The artist invites her up to see his studio, and she goes but balks when the artist asks her to pose in the nude. When the request becomes a demand, Alice stabs him to death. She rejoins her fiance and tries to forget the murder, but her conscience keeps bothering her. To make matters worse, sniveling rat Tracy (Donald Calthrop) materializes to blackmail Alice for the crime. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

A wealthy man pretends he is bankrupt to teach his wayward daughter a lesson. An early, silent Hitchcock film which is wonderfully photographed. ~ Rovi

Alfred Hitchcock's silent The Ring is a traditional prizefighting melodrama, elevated by the richness of the characterizations and the stylish, Germanic use of the camera. Carl Brisson plays "Round One," a cocky young boxer who matriculates from sideshow bouts to the big time. Round One's marriage to Lilian Hall-Davis goes sour when she throws him over for the champ. During the climactic big fight, Hall-Davis realizes that she's still in love with Round One when she witnesses the brutal beating he's getting. As in Hitchcock's later suspense films, sparks ignite between hero and heroine only when there's an element of danger involved. Alfred Hitchcock collaborated on the script of The Ring with his wife Alma Reville. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Though no director was credited for Dangerous Virtue, it is known that Alfred Hitchcock edited the film and wrote the titles. Hollywood actress Jane Novak is cast as icy Englishwoman Beatrice Audley, the fiancee of passionate Frenchman Leon de Brique (Warwick Ward). Certain that her fiance will cheat on her at the earliest opportunity, Beatrice tests Leon by arranging a meeting with her less-inhibited friend Sonia (Julianne Johnston). It is the first of several plot contrivances in this labyrinthine drama which manages to incorporate a London gambling den, a steamy interlude in North Africa, a suicide, and an attempted murder in the proceedings. When shown in New York, Dangerous Virtue was reportedly laughed off the screen; one suspects, however, that Alfred Hitchcock never intended this farrago to be taken seriously in the first place. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Released in Great Britain as The Mountain Eagle, Fear o' God was Alfred Hitchcock's second directorial effort, as well as his second collaboration with Hollywood star Nita Naldi. The story is set in Kentucky, with the Austrian Tyrol incongruously standing in for the Kentucky hills and hollows. Naldi plays a schoolteacher who is caught in the middle of a village feud. Wrongly accused of immorality, the woman is driven into the woods, where she's rescued by mysterious mountain man Fearogod (Malcolm Keen). Screenwriter Elliot Stannard obviously had no idea how Kentuckians acted or behaved, but Hitchcock, despite acute health problems, breathed life into silly goings-on. Despite its flaws, Fear o' God was a hit; more importantly, the film's success allowed Hitchcock to direct a story of his own choosing: The Lodger (1926). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alfred Hitchcock provided the screenplay for this drama about marital discord between the aristocrat Adrian St. Clair (Clive Brook) and his cold-hearted wife Drusilla (Alice Joyce). Harris returns from the war to find his wife is as unresponsive as ever. His affair with a passionate French woman (Marjorie Daw) makes Drusilla realize she must change her ways to avoid divorce and scandal. Victor McLaglen also appears in this drama that is the first to credit the legendary Hitchcock with his debut as the screenwriter. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi