THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS LEGACY COLLECTION

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ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS – SEVEN SEASONS’ WORTH OF HALF-HOUR EPISODES from 1955-1962.

Review by Roy Frumkes

Before Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, Thriller, The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Perry Mason, even before Dragnet, this was early for being as good as it was. There were a great many episodes, and Hitch fluttered among them to bestow his input and steerage. Some he even directed. Don’t worry; I’m not going to review them all. But there are some episodes that are as wonderful as the 1:33:1 TV aspect ratio productions could be, and I’ll point out a few.

BREAKDOWN was a stand-out featuring Joseph Cotten as a businessman who callously fires a weeping underling, then breaks his neck in a car crash and can’t call out for help. During acts 2 and 3 we’re treated almost entirely to his paralyzed POV.

The story’s conceit sounds much like something Andy Warhol might have done – for instance his ‘experimental’ film EMPIRE, 8 hours (and 5 minutes) of one stationary camera angle, as the sun goes down over the Empire State Building. Made in 1964, it sounds like an opportunity to catch up on one’s meditation.

But how about BREAKDOWN? It really is the same visual concept but made for TV, not for Warhol and his cronies. No, this one was done for the home dwellers of 1955, and it’s absolutely phenomenal. Hitch felt that the couch potatoes of yesteryear could take it, and they did! Nine years before Warhol’s static exercise hit the 16mm projectors, and it still holds up. And it was directed by the man himself, and belongs in any compilation of his work. Your Hitchcock shelf would be incomplete without it.

The only popularly recognized short film like it (and this is a keeper as well) is LA JETÉE, released in 1962, a French short comprised entirely of still photos, until very near the end…

LA JETÉE spawned a 1995 feature directed by Terry Gilliam called 12 MONKEYS, which starred Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt.

Then there is MR. BLANCHARD’S SECRET, an early flirtation with the REAR WINDOW concept, and Hitchcock was the director on this one, testing the waters.

THE GLASS EYE – Season 3. Co-Written by Stirling Silliphant (IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT). With Jessica Tandy, Tom Conway, and, of all people, William Shatner!

Also from Season 3 and also directed by Hitch: LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER. Whereas BREAKDOWN toys with his experimental leanings, LAMB wallows in his love of irony, courtesy of Roald Dahl’s teleplay.

DESIGN FOR LOVING – Season 4 – written by Ray Bradbury and featuring Norman Lloyd, who was also one of the series’ producers. He also fell off the Statue of Liberty and screamed all the way down in Hitchcock’s SABOTEUR (1942).

And, perhaps the most interesting Lloyd tidbit — he lived to 106!

AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE – Season 5. Here's a fascinating genesis. Robert Enrico, a French filmmaker, directed a trilogy of short films in 1961 about the American Civil War. One of the half-hour narratives, originally published in book form in 1890, was the right length (after a few shots were removed) for the TV format, plus there was intentionally no dialogue, which further decluttered the US/French co-presentation. So Rod Serling grabbed it for TWILIGHT ZONE, and even managed to do his standard intro, dressed in Civil War garb, explaining what TV audiences were about to see.

But why am I lurking around a different TV series? Well, the story had originally cropped up on the Hitchcock Presents series in 1959, but it wasn’t the French version. The Hitchcock version had a different cast, a different crew, and was frankly not as good as the Twilight Zone broadcast. But you can see all of them and compare them for yourself.

MAN FROM THE SOUTH - Season 5 (1960). Perhaps the pinnacle of all seven seasons. There are three main characters. One of them, having lost badly at the slot tables in Vegas, is trying to pick up a woman to assuage his bummed psyche. And……I can’t spoil it for you. But Hitchcock isn’t known as the master of suspense for nothing. I showed this film every year when I was teaching screenwriting, and the students were reduced to drooling jellyfish by the end.

The casting is fabulous. Steve McQueen, shortly after his good-natured turn in THE BLOB (1958), again plays it low key here, but he’s got to – the premise is so outrageous. Peter Lorre is the antagonist, if in fact there is an antagonist, and he was also at a point in his career where he resembled a frog more than a human, but still had his wit about him. And the spunky girl in the mix is Neile Adams, McQueen’s wife at the time, well-known for nursing and guiding his career until he arrived at the top. They’re all very good and you probably won’t ever get tired of this one. The ending is a bit heavy-handed, just like Hitchcock’s ending in PSYCHO, but neither is ruined by his decision to make the wrap-up abundantly clear.

Quentin Tarantino directed a short segment from the 1995 feature FOUR ROOMS in which he paid tribute (or not) to the Hitchcock TV short, while supposedly misnaming it THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOOD…if indeed it was an error. Unlikely with Tarantino involved. But there is a wonderful film called THAT MAN FROM RIO with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and perhaps there’s some maze-like significance between the two.

It should be noted, as you embark on your compressed seven-year journey, that the quality of the prints varies. For example, THE GLASS EYE, in an earlier presentation of this collection, was shown in the proper 1:33:1 aspect ratio, whereas when this most recent release pops up on your screen it is mis-presented in an aspect ratio of 1:85:1, leaving us to fiddle with it. The blacks, however, are nonetheless lush.