Pelham and Lamb to the Slaughter earned the Master of Suspense two Emmy nominations.īut it was director Robert Stevens who took home the award for season three’s first episode The Glass Eye. This aspect of the series no doubt contributed to the public’s fascination and constant viewership.Īlthough Hitchcock opened and closed each episode, he only actually directed 17 episodes. Some of the actors involved included Robert Duvall, Charles Bronson, Barbara Steele, Vera Miles, Bette Davis, Vincent Price, Fay Wray, Dick van Dyke, Cloris Leachman, Angie Dickinson, Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds, Peter Lorre, and even Alfred’s own daughter Patricia. The show also had massive star power behind it, treasured veterans and rising stars alike appearing in Hitch’s tales of mystery and murder. Though the same creative team from Presents stayed with the Hour series and all of the combined 363 episodes (270 from Presents, 93 from Hour) were produced and shot at Universal Studios in California, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour is typically seen as being a separate entity from its former incarnation. In 1962 the series adopted a longer 50-minute format and changed its name to the more fitting The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. ![]() Who can forget the morbidly whimsical sound of Charles Gounod’s Funeral March for a Marionette, as Hitchcock’s shadow slowly fills the lines of his famous caricature? The opening sequence of the show itself has been imbedded within the consciousness of popular culture at large. These programmes are fun, pithy and entertaining and still worth watching today.Having already thrilled audiences with a good three decades of suspenseful filmmaking, Alfred Hitchcock turned his attentions to television and on OctoAlfred Hitchcock Presents premiered to home viewers everywhere.Ĭontaining individual stories concerned mostly with criminal acts and other dastardly goings-on, the show was a guaranteed means of fans getting their fix of Hitchcock’s trademark tension within a 25-minute time span in between sponsor commercials (which Hitch so brilliantly and balefully poked fun at during most of his opening monologues). I think it's great that a top Hollywood director in his prime could make time to adapt so well to the TV market as Hitchcock did here. ![]() All the episodes benefit from acerbic intros and outros by the man himself, playing up to his curmudgeonly persona while the sinisterly jocular theme music still conjures up that famous pencil-profile image which he would fill over the titles. The production values are high as is the acting talent involved famously this is how Hitch discovered Vera Miles, who was to feature in two of his features in the years ahead as well as a penchant for a low budget, black and white shoot which would result in a certain movie centring on a psychologically disturbed motel owner, the title of which escapes me. Snappily scripted, plotted and edited, these short programmes prefigure the likes of "Twilight Zone" in the 60's and "Tales Of The Unexpected" in the 70's. ![]() ![]() Of the first four episodes I've watched from series 1, I've been impressed by their coherence, consistency and diversity, for instance one was set in the wild west, a genre you can hardly imagine the Master covering in his own work. I am a massive Hitchcock fan and would argue that his creative peak in features was in the mid-late 50's, ironically just at the time he commenced production of this short-form series bearing his imprimatur, even if he only had time to personally direct a handful of episodes.
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