The Alfred Hitchcock Hour

Alfred Hitchock Presents ran half-hour shows, which stuck strictly to whodunits. The Alfred Hitchock hour tended more toward one-hour dramas with twist endings. As usual, each episode boasted a pageant of stars. Stories were not as tightly knit. Some episodes were laconic. This was television's last attempt at the Playhouse 90s, Alcoa/Goodyear TV Playhouses, the Loretta Young Shows and Kraft Mystery Theatres. It was the last of an age of television, which story lines lasted an entire hour, rather than being broken up into various story lines and woven subplots. Here were the the last of the great playwrights, in their eleventh hour, just before Fred Silverman turned television into tedium.

For Alfred Hitchcock's centennial, Encore has been showing old reruns of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour tv show. I really have been enjoying them. Especially seeing Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield, who co-starred together in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, to team up again! I have only seen 4 but I am begging for more.:-)

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour has generated two schools of thought. Some think the longer format allows for more character development while others maintain it results in episodes having to be padded. I would say compared to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, these are of a more even quality. I scored a few 9 or 10 in both series, but AHP had many more boring, even terrible episodes, though to be fair more than twice as many were made.

My ten favourites, in chronological order: 3 Night of the Owl. The story may rather lack believability, but compensated by great performances from Brian Keith (who seems to me like an understated John Wayne) and Patricia Breslin.

8 House Guest. Not entirely dissimilar to the above, decent family taken advantage of by a cunning crook.

23 The Lonely Hours. Obsessive, childless woman steals her landlady's baby, all female cast.

33 Home Away From Home. Atmospheric drama, mental patients imprison staff and take over asylum.

45 The Magic Shop. Much more sci-fi than usual Hitchcock. Half a dozen reviewers compare it to The Twilight Zone's It's a Good Life, for my money this is creepier and has more content.

50 Final Escape. Uncomplicated tale of a prisoner who will take almost any risk to escape. Without doubt the most shocking denouement.

65 Return of Verge Likens. Man plots revenge on local politician who killed his father, undeterred by objections from his easy going brother. Unanimously acclaimed by reviewers thus far.

75 Consider Her Ways. Another episode escaped from The Twilight Zone. A doctor under the influence of a new drug hallucinates about a future earth without men, and determines to prevent it.

84 Death Scene. This is not universally liked by other reviewers. I enjoyed it as a nod, whether intentional or not, to Sunset Boulevard, with private movie theatre, classy old car, and swimming pool.

92 Night Fever. An injured robber falls for his older nurse, but is he just trying to use her? I include this one mainly to question the groupthink of several reviewers who accept the storyline claim that Coleen Dewhurst is plain. She is over 40 but surely better looking than the villain's floozy like girlfriend briefly seen at the end. It's in the eye of the beholder of course, but maybe these guys would say Diana Doors was better looking than Diana Rigg?

and many now famous (and infamous) actors from the past and present. This show is suspenseful and similar to the shorter version, albeit the stories are better, more involved.

One story which is quirky and interesting is the episode where a drunken man loses everything. Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield, 1962. Tony Randall delivers a perfect performance as frustrated ad executive (he and Mansfield reprising this role and story from the hysterical comedy "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?"). Since this is Hitchcock, however, there is a twist and pathos to the storyline.

Worth owning on DVD and also watching in the U.S. on Chiller channel. 9/10.

First of all, Alfred Hitchcock's introduction, station brake and wrap up monologues are worth the price of watching those commercials alone — which regularly were humorously ridiculed by Hitchcock himself. Watching these shows these many years later is therapy for the lightening fast world of the 21st century. Lots of husbands killing wives and wives killing husbands. And of course, then, nobody could get away with anything — if not in the story itself then in the ending wrap up by Hitchcock.

AND, it was an era when REAL ACTORS were on TV — not the pretty face empty nothing's on TV today. Living in impossible apartments and working in impossible work places and performing impossible plots.