Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Since I doubt anybody here was around during its original run, has anybody seen this show, most likely when it came out on DVD? I've seen the first four seasons so far, and on the first one you really get cheated because all the episodes freeze and you miss large parts of it, but aside from that, it's a good show and I wish they'd get around to releasing more seasons, it was very good...they had a few episodes that couldn't keep my interest but a lot of them were very good, and of course Alfred Hitchcock's opening and closing monologues and jokes pertaining to the sponsors were always very funny.

And they reused a lot of people in it, Dick York was in several episodes, Jessica Tandy was in a few and in every single one she was in that I've seen her in anyway, she always seemed to play a woman who had gone bonkers by one means or another. Also, that Philip Coolidge guy who, for lack of a better reference, we know him as Ollie from William Castle's movie The Tingler, very funny looking man, he was in several episodes also, and it was odd to see him not playing a villain in most of them anyway. And also, Hitchcock's own daughter was in several episodes as well, and seeing her makes you wonder what her mother looked like because she doesn't look like her father at all.

On a side note though, I read that when they did the show, it broadcasted in America AND England, and in America his jokes were about the sponsors, but in England his jokes were about Americans...makes you wonder what he was saying about us 55 years ago?

I saw an episode years ago as a kid that creeped me out so much it wasmyears until I watched the show again. It was called The Final Escape.

Convicted bank robber John Perry is sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a state prison lumber camp. Determined to get out, he befriends an alcoholic inmate named Doc. Doc is in charge of the prison infirmary as well as burial of the dead. Doc makes an offer to John: if John will finance an operation for Doc's granddaughter, he will get him out of prison. Doc's plan is to hide John inside the coffin of the next inmate who dies. The coffin will then be buried and dug up after the gravediggers and guards leave. John will then make his escape. All goes according to plan, until Doc fails to dig John up. John is horrified to learn why after the shroud slips off the face of the corpse sharing the coffin with him: Doc died of a heart attack the night before

WHOA! I haven't seen that one, must be on a season to be released sometime in the future.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/13935/alfred-hitchcock-hour-final-escape

Sorry if I spoiled it

Ahhhh, the hour long show, no wonder, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which we watch, is only half an hour long.

One episode that I found very interesting...it wasn't so much the episode itself but about an actress from it.

One episode, "A Man Greatly Beloved" from season 2, had a little girl named Hildegard Fell, and she kind of reminds me of the girl from The Bad Seed, except she's not a murderer and she's not sinister or malicious, but she's very smart for her age. And I read about the girl who played her, Evelyn Rudie, and came across this little anecdote you'd have to read to believe:

In 1959, at age 9, she disappeared from her Los Angeles home and was feared kidnapped. But it turned out she had booked a flight to Washington herself and gotten on the plane unaccompanied. When she was taken off the plane in Baltimore, she said she wanted to visit President and his wife Mamie Eisenhower, whom she had met previously, at the White House to ask their help to "get me a part in a TV series".

I'd like to know exactly how many 9 year olds would have enough brains to try an idea like that.

We are now into the 5th season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and this is where the reviews are quite mixed, some people love it, some don't, some say the episodes are hit or miss. Well so far they're pretty good, but we saw a couple that seem more suited for the Twilight Zone than Alfred Hitchcock, I'll let everyone else judge for themselves on these two:

I watched this as a kid in the 50's & 60's. Liked it then and still do (I watch it on a TV channel that plays old shows).

I remember the almost-hypnotic effect I got from that soft background score when it prepares for commercial, and I still find it strangely soothing.

We saw a good one a few nights ago, Road Hog:



One of the perfect 'Revenge is sweet' storylines, and it was remade for the New Alfred Hitchcock Presents which I guess was done in the 80s, rather well also I thought:

I LOVE this episode, The Schartz-Metterklume Method, now THIS is the nanny you want in your house instead of Mary Poppins.

Should I admit it? I did see the original shows back in the 50's. All of them. Now I am watching reruns on AnTv most nights from 9 to 10pm until the Fall season shows begin.