MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR A LOT OF EPISODES CONTAINED HEREIN, BE THOUST WARNED



One of the nice things about Hulu is that it allows you to pick and choose pretty nimbly through a season -- so I haven't seen all of season one, just the episodes that interested me, which here means the ones with the high ratings on other sites, the ones that Hitchcock directed, and the ones based on the work of writers I knew, like Stanley Ellin ("Help Wanted").

My immediate impression is something that's maybe well known by everybody, but I don't see discussed out loud all that much when this show comes up -- these are mostly gags, don't you think? Half hour setups for a big punchline? Yeah, usually they're pretty bleak, black jokes, but still, if anything, I found most of these pretty funny, more than anything. (Maybe I have an odd sense of humor, I don't know. Would explain a lot, wouldn't it?) Did you hear the one about the guy who kills his shrew of a wife, only to be tripped up when it turns out for once in her life she did something nice for him? ("Back for Christmas"). Or how about the one about the guy who planned the perfect murder -- ground glass in the egg dish -- only to be tripped up when the doddering victim got the fish night and the egg night wrong? ("The Perfect Murder"). Etc.

I read a hell of a lot of mystery/crime fiction -- if you go into any good used bookstore you'll see tons of Alfred Hitchcock -themed anthologies. I suspect -- I don't think I've ever thought of this before -- that these shows were profoundly influential in the genre, during the Fifties and Sixties. And I don't think that was such a hot thing, because the "punchline" ending has a limited sort of range -- ie, you can only do so much with it. Once you get sensitized to these twists, you start expecting them, and then a lot of the tension evaporates. In "The Creeper" a mad killer is killing (naturally enough) and a woman alone at night is freaked out about it. Every male figure -- and, humourously, one mannish woman -- is portrayed as threatening, but we still have time left in the episode and we know that there's gonna be a twist, right? It can't be any of them. And of course it isn't, and of course there's a twist -- the killer is the one person she felt safe about, the guy who's come to put a bolt on the door.

There are attempts here to be more inventive with the structure. "Breakdown" is a little morality play wherein a Coldhearted Business Man is temporarily paralyzed, and the big twist is that his only hope for salvation is to show some emotion. Sort of like WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S if Bernie were still alive. I didn't find it suspenseful -- I found the whole setup very silly, frankly -- but I did like the shots of Joseph's Cotton's blankly staring face, very creepy by itself. "Momentum" is based on a Cornell Woolrich story and tries to dramatize a lot of Woolrich's typical concerns, which are mainly that Live Sucks and Love Fails and First You Dream, Then You Die. These tend to be twist-like in their expression -- Woolrich tended to see the world as a place where ridiculously awful things could happen to you, because God hates you, basically.

It's a good adaptation; not my particular cup of tea only because I find Woolrich himself very hit or miss as a writer. (An earlier episode, "The Big Switch", also based on a Woolrich story, works I think much better, mainly because it's played more broadly, emphasizing the ridiculousness of the story's structure.)

I think the best episode I saw, though was "And So Died Ria..." I don't know, some Russian name I can't remember how to spell, but it's great. I mean, it has Claude Rains and Charles Bronson, which is something like having The Hulk and Swamp Thing in the same comic book. It's also probably the best treatment I've ever seen of the hoary "the ventriloquist who's dummy is a little too ALIVE, if you know what I mean" thing. It's not structured with a twist ending, and goes to show that you could have half-hour crime stories that didn't rely on gimmicks. It also manages to pack some real feeling into the thing -- really, first rate all around, check it out.

Available on Hulu, for free, with Limited Commercial Interruption. They have Season two up, which I'll probably pop into next, as well as "American Gothic" and "South Park" (those guys have put what looks to be most of the episodes online for free -- I sorely do love me some "South Park".)

doug

I think you're right that these shows are basically comedies, and I'm pretty sure Hitchcock though so too.

That Cotten episode is fantastic, though I'm pretty sure I've seen it ripped off a few times since.

I believe I made a mistake going through the season 1 box chronologically, as my happiness quotient has been at about 25% with this series. The Hitchcocks, of course, have all been standouts, but the non- have not made good use of the setup/punchline formula. I'll soldier on with this approach, but it's good to know there's still some good stuff waiting.

Much as Karloff's THRILLER owed to AHP, it didn't seem to suffer from the structural rigors you describe, Doug. Even the Woolriches I remember seemed more like twists of fate than of plot. (And we pretty much all agree how nice it'll be to revisit those stories, someday.)

I just found out that one of my all-time biggest "Why did I tape over that?" gaffes is on this set, "The Big Switch", starring the incredible Beverly Michaels. Reason to hang in, right there.

If you watch "The Older Sister," based on a short play (not a story, as the credits put it) by Lillian De La Torre, which is in turn based on the Lizzie Borden case, you'll see an oddity. We know Alfie filmed a slew of intros and tags at a time, some beforethe actual episodes were even done. Well, it appears that was the case here, because his comments at the end of the playlet refer to the original ending of the play and not what was filmed, which was much less violent.



SPOILER:
In the play, Lizzie, who turns out to have been innocent of the murders, but who has stood trial and been acquitted, hears a neighbor child singing the "Lizzie Borden took an axe..." ditty, and angrily swings the murder weapon, hidden in the house for a year by the real murderer, whose identity she knows she can never reveal, into a tabletop.

These are the actions Hitch comments on when he opens the epilogue with "Did she seem a trifle overwrought to you? She did to me!" He continues to chat about how an annoying child wouldn't have him axing a table, but the child itself.

The action of the playlet, as filmed, ends with Lizzie grimly saying goodbye to the real killer, and walking, lost in thought, into her parlor where she joins her cat upon the sofa on which her father had been butchered a year ago. The camera pulls back, and we fade out.