kimgoo
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Post by kimgoo on Mar 3, 2017 19:23:47 GMT
I'm not sure if this thread should be in the '50s or '60s.
Are there any fans here?
I slightly prefer the hour long episodes to the half hour. Partly because I love that early-mid '60s TV era.
Favorite episodes: Breakdown (AHP), The Creeper (AHP), Where the Woodbine Twineth (AHH), An Unlocked Window (AHH), The Magic Shop (AHH), The Jar (AHH).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2017 19:39:15 GMT
Love this show! It's on Hulu right now as well, which is sweet.
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bd74
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Post by bd74 on Mar 3, 2017 20:16:17 GMT
Great show. My favorites episodes are The Monkey's Paw and The Sign of Satan. Though I sometimes get its episodes confused with those from Thriller.
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Post by geode on Mar 3, 2017 21:47:18 GMT
I'm not sure if this thread should be in the '50s or '60s. Are there any fans here? I slightly prefer the hour long episodes to the half hour. Partly because I love that early-mid '60s TV era. Favorite episodes: Breakdown (AHP), The Creeper (AHP), Where the Woodbine Twineth (AHH), An Unlocked Window (AHH), The Magic Shop (AHH), The Jar (AHH). "Breakdown" remains my favorite episode. It introduced me to Joseph Cotten which caused me to watch what would become my favorite film when it came on TV...The Third Man. Other episodes that remain in memory include "A Lamb to the Slaughter" and the intriguing "Consider her Ways" from the hour-long episodes.
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Post by telegonus on Mar 4, 2017 8:23:57 GMT
The Hitchcock shows are tricky, and even on the old IMDB boards there would be posts on one show on the boards of the other. I'd to see a board for each show here.
Of the two, I'm actually of two minds, as they're different shows. One critic described the half-hour Presents as a jack-in-the box compared to the psychologically "deeper" hour longs, and I suppose there's some truth in that, though there are "deep" half-hours, such as the classic The Glass Eye as well as a few others that deal with relationships, with love, loneliness, hate, greed and even art in ways that I would not call shallow. One that comes to mind that's anything but shallow, The Contest For Aaron Gold, adapted from a Philip Roth Story.
Since I haven't seen a half-hour for a long while I'm more comfortable discussing the hour episodes. They're definitely Sixties in sensibility, in a non-stereotypical way I should add, while the earlier show always felt Fifties, even in its final two or three seasons. That early to mid-Sixites vibe is quite strong in the hour longs, as strong as it is in such very different TV series from the same era as The Fugitive and The Outer Limits. In its final season the Hitch hour came near to becoming a horror show. As with the half-hours, the hour longs were hit and miss, with more hits than misses.
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kimgoo
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Post by kimgoo on Mar 4, 2017 13:39:57 GMT
The Hitchcock shows are tricky, and even on the old IMDB boards there would be posts on one show on the boards of the other. I'd to see a board for each show here. I always thought they were the same show just renamed after it expanded to an hour.
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Post by telegonus on Mar 5, 2017 8:30:50 GMT
They were actually quite different shows. Alike on the surface, both shows being products of the Hitchcock production company (Shamley), both hosted by Hitchcock, and both even featured adaptations of works of the same writers, yet they were different in emphasis, which far more room for characterization and changes in the storylines in the hour series.
The hour show evolved from the half-hour (IMO). That it was an anthology gave it more flexibility. There were many TV shows that expanded from a half-hour to an hour during the same period, with one of the most successful being Gunsmoke, which became an hour long version of what had been a half-hour, and while there were some changes during the transition it was essentially the same series, only with longer stories.
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 6, 2017 14:08:21 GMT
While there are some excellent AHPs, I believe Hitchcock, like Serling, was more comfortable with the half hour format. Most of my favorite episodes have been listed already, so I'll mention one that is sometimes overlooked: "Arthur", starring Laurence Harvey as a New Zealand chicken farmer who has a problem with his fiancee, and comes up with a wickedly clever way to resolve that problem. Hitchcock himself directed (there's a very effective use of sound effects) but it's Harvey who steals the honors. Those who think of him as cold and dour will be surprised at how amusingly theatrical he is here. It's probably my favorite Harvey performance.
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Post by telegonus on Mar 6, 2017 18:52:21 GMT
Arthur is a good one. I believe it's from just prior to Laurence Harvey's breaking through to major stardom (Room At The Top?), and he's very good in this one. BTW, I read somewhere that Alfred Hitchcock didn't like eggs, maybe even was an eggo-phobe. He apparently never ate them, which makes the episode kind of (I guess) ironic.
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Post by telegonus on Mar 7, 2017 8:22:47 GMT
I watched the hour long Power Of Attorney tonight, have seen it before. It's not one of the best but it had an intriguing story. Richard Johnson's performance as a smooth con man didn't work for me. He was a competent actor but lacked the dashing quality, the charm, that his role required. Geraldine Fitzgerald, on the other hand was brilliant, and a joy to watch, especially early on.
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 7, 2017 16:34:50 GMT
Arthur is a good one. I believe it's from just prior to Laurence Harvey's breaking through to major stardom ( Room At The Top?), and he's very good in this one. This episode dates from the period of AH's project No Bail for The Judge, to have been filmed with Harvey and Audrey Hepburn. So I presume AH and LH did "Arthur" as sort of a lark/run-through before tackling No Bail -- which ended up unfilmed.
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Post by mikef6 on Mar 8, 2017 15:51:24 GMT
Two favorite episodes. Steve McQueen and Peter Lorrie provided one of the most memorable viewing experiences of my youth with their roles in the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode titled The Man From The South – broadcast on January 3, 1960. McQueen, then the star of the western series “Wanted-Dead or Alive,” was the lead protagonist and probably the main draw at the time. This famous story traumatized an entire generation - and we loved it. Several decades later I showed this program to both my sons and learned that it had not lost its punch. #2 son immediately recognized that this production had been referenced by Quentin Tarantino in his segment of the anthology film “Four Rooms” (1995), which, in my kid's eyes, gave the Hitchcock a little more prestige. Tarantino titled his own story The Man From Hollywood. A second half-hour episode that I love is Incident In A Small Jail (March 21, 1961). A mild mannered traveling salesman (John Fiedler, the voice of Disney's Winnie the Pooh) is taken to jail for jaywalking by an arrogant sheriff of a small western town. In the cell with him is a thug suspected of being the serial killer of several young women. When the sheriff steps out, a lynch mob shows up. Great action suspense. Tremendous shock of an ending.
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kimgoo
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Post by kimgoo on Mar 8, 2017 16:26:51 GMT
While there are some excellent AHPs, I believe Hitchcock, like Serling, was more comfortable with the half hour format. Most of my favorite episodes have been listed already, so I'll mention one that is sometimes overlooked: "Arthur", starring Laurence Harvey as a New Zealand chicken farmer who has a problem with his fiancee, and comes up with a wickedly clever way to resolve that problem. Hitchcock himself directed (there's a very effective use of sound effects) but it's Harvey who steals the honors. Those who think of him as cold and dour will be surprised at how amusingly theatrical he is here. It's probably my favorite Harvey performance. I'm sure I've seen nearly all the episodes (if not all), some multiple times. This one just doesn't seem familiar. I'm pretty overdue for a re-watch of both series.
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Post by telegonus on Mar 17, 2017 7:42:37 GMT
Two favorite episodes. Steve McQueen and Peter Lorrie provided one of the most memorable viewing experiences of my youth with their roles in the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode titled The Man From The South – broadcast on January 3, 1960. McQueen, then the star of the western series “Wanted-Dead or Alive,” was the lead protagonist and probably the main draw at the time. This famous story traumatized an entire generation - and we loved it. Several decades later I showed this program to both my sons and learned that it had not lost its punch. #2 son immediately recognized that this production had been referenced by Quentin Tarantino in his segment of the anthology film “Four Rooms” (1995), which, in my kid's eyes, gave the Hitchcock a little more prestige. Tarantino titled his own story The Man From Hollywood. A second half-hour episode that I love is Incident In A Small Jail (March 21, 1961). A mild mannered traveling salesman (John Fiedler, the voice of Disney's Winnie the Pooh) is taken to jail for jaywalking by an arrogant sheriff of a small western town. In the cell with him is a thug suspected of being the serial killer of several young women. When the sheriff steps out, a lynch mob shows up. Great action suspense. Tremendous shock of an ending. Another excellent AHP with Steve McQueen: Human Interest Story. Suspenseful, often droll, with McQueen nicely serving the material. I like the way the half-hour series toyed more with sci-fi, the hour longs. There were a fair number of "fantastic" half-hours, while when the hours shifted away from realism they tended to move more toward horror, with Consider Her Ways a standout (sci-fi) exception. Very good, and often surreal.
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Post by Nalkarj on Mar 17, 2017 15:28:01 GMT
While there are some excellent AHPs, I believe Hitchcock, like Serling, was more comfortable with the half hour format. Most of my favorite episodes have been listed already, so I'll mention one that is sometimes overlooked: "Arthur", starring Laurence Harvey as a New Zealand chicken farmer who has a problem with his fiancee, and comes up with a wickedly clever way to resolve that problem. Hitchcock himself directed (there's a very effective use of sound effects) but it's Harvey who steals the honors. Those who think of him as cold and dour will be surprised at how amusingly theatrical he is here. It's probably my favorite Harvey performance. I haven't seen many episodes of either Hitchcock show, but Arthur has always been one of my favorites of the few I have seen. In several ways it's a dry run for Psycho, with a number of elements in common. (In fact, another, albeit personal, element in common--I have a younger cousin who typically despises black-and-white and "old movies." I eventually got her to watch Psycho once, though, and she loved it--and she also liked Arthur!) Harvey's performance is superb. In fact, the whole thing could be a first-class Hitchcock feature film; it is very Hitchcockian (that overused term Doghouse and I were discussing on the "Hitchcock Films" thread), a quality that many of even the Hitch-directed episodes of the series are not.
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 17, 2017 15:42:17 GMT
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Post by Nalkarj on Mar 17, 2017 15:49:09 GMT
I've seen that one, Richard ( One More Mile to Go, right?), and I agree that the "disposal of the body" aspect (and Marion's early stealing of the money) of Psycho has more similarity to it than to Arthur. With that said, I think that Arthur's themes, meanings, and general plot better serve as a progenitors for many of Hitch's directorial conceits in Psycho.
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Post by naterdawg on Mar 17, 2017 17:25:08 GMT
I'm not sure if this thread should be in the '50s or '60s. Are there any fans here? I slightly prefer the hour long episodes to the half hour. Partly because I love that early-mid '60s TV era. Favorite episodes: Breakdown (AHP), The Creeper (AHP), Where the Woodbine Twineth (AHH), An Unlocked Window (AHH), The Magic Shop (AHH), The Jar (AHH). I also prefer the hour-long episodes, especially the one's with the animated openings. You mentioned four of my all-time favorite AHH episodes: Where the Woodbine Twineth; An Unlocked Window; The Magic Shop, and The Jar. Here's something interesting: the musical score of The Magic Shop was regularly used on Thriller! It was also used in the Christopher Lee AHH episode, the one where he played a devil-worshiping European actor. The Creeper--is that the one with a young Richard Chamberlain?
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Post by telegonus on Mar 18, 2017 6:16:29 GMT
I think those animated, Chas Addams-like openings were the second and third season. The first, which I'm just starting to watch all over again now, opens more like the half-hour show. The hour shows really got increasingly gruesome as time went on, which is sort of strange as the time was only three years! On the other hand, I don't remember the half-hours changing that much aside from the more contemporary looking and feeling ones reflecting their time, as to fashion, etc., as with Perry Mason.
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Post by mikef6 on Mar 18, 2017 19:30:11 GMT
Two favorite episodes. Steve McQueen and Peter Lorrie provided one of the most memorable viewing experiences of my youth with their roles in the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode titled The Man From The South – broadcast on January 3, 1960. McQueen, then the star of the western series “Wanted-Dead or Alive,” was the lead protagonist and probably the main draw at the time. This famous story traumatized an entire generation - and we loved it. Several decades later I showed this program to both my sons and learned that it had not lost its punch. #2 son immediately recognized that this production had been referenced by Quentin Tarantino in his segment of the anthology film “Four Rooms” (1995), which, in my kid's eyes, gave the Hitchcock a little more prestige. Tarantino titled his own story The Man From Hollywood. A second half-hour episode that I love is Incident In A Small Jail (March 21, 1961). A mild mannered traveling salesman (John Fiedler, the voice of Disney's Winnie the Pooh) is taken to jail for jaywalking by an arrogant sheriff of a small western town. In the cell with him is a thug suspected of being the serial killer of several young women. When the sheriff steps out, a lynch mob shows up. Great action suspense. Tremendous shock of an ending. Another excellent AHP with Steve McQueen: Human Interest Story. Suspenseful, often droll, with McQueen nicely serving the material. I like the way the half-hour series toyed more with sci-fi, the hour longs. There were a fair number of "fantastic" half-hours, while when the hours shifted away from realism they tended to move more toward horror, with Consider Her Ways a standout (sci-fi) exception. Very good, and often surreal. I just finished "Human Interest Story." Excellent. I only figured out what was going to happen seconds before the start of the final scene. Hitchcock's final wrap-up is one of his funniest. Thanks for this lead.
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