Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Not his hole, hopefully...

Roku has both Alfred Hitchcock Presents (not his hole) AND The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

Ritter and Wickes are in AH Presents (a half hour series, 7 seasons.) Redford and Cassavettes are in the AH Hour show (3 seasons.)

Lots of goodies in both.

Which one is Gena in?

"An Out for Oscar" is my favorite, "Night Caller", with Bruce Dern a second favorite

The premiere episode Revenge was directed by Hitch and stars Vera Miles as a dancer who says she is attacked and her husband Ralph Meeker seeks revenge.

R5, that's the episode I was hoping to see on Monday night as the series was due to start over from the beginning this week (MeTV showed the last episode, "Sorcerer's Apprentice," on Friday night). Instead they changed over to the 1-hour version and now I guess they'll run through those episodes first before cycling back to the half-hour series.

Personally, I found most of the 1-hour episodes underwhelming but so be it.

Let me look through the list of 1 hour ones and see if anything excited me...

The Paragon. A man comes up with the solution to dealing with his cold-hearted wife. The Joan Fontaine character is supposed to be mean but I didn't think she was so bad.

r8, Joan's hair in that episode is epic

The Lonely Hours. worth it to see Nancy Kelly from The Bad Seed eating the furniture again.

One of the best shows ever

Early role for George Segal and playing opposite hammy Anne Baxter.

The Jar is one for the cultists.

I usually hate Teresa Wright but she is great in this.

The Jar is fucking awesome

This one has a smashing twist end.

This one is for cultists too but gays can guess the twist right away.

R17, thank you! Everyone raves about this episode but I could tell who the killer was (and what the "big reveal" would be) right from the start (though I agree being a gay man probably helped a lot). I found the whole thing a complete letdown in the end.

There are so many hidden gems throughout the series, but my personal favorite is "A Little Sleep," an extremely rare opportunity to see Broadway star Barbara Cook on film in a non-singing sexpot badgirl role. The episode was directed by Paul Henreid, Bette Davis' costar in "Now, Voyager."

Hitchcock directed about a dozen or more of the episodes of his show.

Some are better than others, but they're all enjoyable.

My personal favorites are Revenge (with Ralph Meeker & Vera Miles), Breakdown (with Joseph Cotton), he famous Lamb to the Slaughter (Miles again), Bang! You're Dead (with Billy Mummy) and Back for Christmas.

And this amusing little gem starring Audrey Meadows . . .

June looks like Frances Fisher there, r16.

The Second Wife and An Unlocked Window are great

For Vera Miles fans. Everyone seems to be in love with her in this.

Ruth Roman is always good value and there are funny alternate versions of how Anne Francis behaves.

The kid in this is really evil.

Bob Newhart : How to get rid of your wife.

Lamb to the Slaughter was really good

[quote]My personal favorites are Revenge (with Ralph Meeker & Vera Miles), Breakdown (with Joseph Cotton), he famous Lamb to the Slaughter (Miles again), Bang! You're Dead (with Billy Mummy) and Back for Christmas.

1. Cotten

2. Mumy

I remember when television showed quality dramatic programs like Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I wasn't aware Roku was offering this show for streaming. Thanks.

I'm not old enough to have seen the show the first time around but fell in love with it when it aired on Nick at Nite in the early 90s

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice went unaired for years. I had to watch it because of my crush on Brandon De Wilde.

What

The Crystal Trench is another one Hitch directed. I really like that one

I think I' may change my name to Crystal Trench.

Someone should revive the anthology series. I think the modern audience would take to it if the scripts were consistently good. Also, they must be relatively inexpensive considering there's no permanent cast to demand raises each year. How about it, Netflix?

There was an 80s revival that wasn't nearly as good as the original

I don't think any revival ever lives up to the original. As R36 notes, the AHP revival in the '80s certainly didn't. None of the "Twilight Zone" revivals have ever come close to the Rod Serling original. I always felt that the Showtime revival of "Outer Limits" in the '90s was subpar as well (again, just my opinion).

Perhaps the recent Netflix revival of "Lost in Space" might be considered just as good or better than the original, I'm not sure.

R35 I'd say the extremely popular series Black Mirror was part of that legacy.

[ R14 ] "Lonely Place" haunted me for years as a kid. Bruce Dern's Jesse kept my sister and I from falling asleep for many a night.

Poor Diana, r31. Not once but...

The Crystal Trench is the Julian Sands story,

My sibs' and my fave 2 are "Man From the South," with Peter Lorre, Steve McQueen, and his then-wife Neile; and "The Day of the Bullet," with Barry Gordon and Dennis Patrick.

We have hashed and re-hashed those episodes for the last 55 years.

^ Both those episodes are great

Bill Mumy's interviews for the Archive of American Television are all great — he worked with everyone and doesn't hesitate to dish. Plus he seems like a nice, down-to-earth guy, mostly full of praise for his coworkers.

Hitchcock is the exception. I think Hitchcock threatened to drive a nail through his foot (if I remember correctly) and terrified him as a little boy.

I grew up watching Lost In Space reruns and wanting to be Will Robinson so I can experience the space technologies and all the adventures. So Bill Mumy is a personal favorite. I saw several of his interviews on Archive of American Television, they are very engaging.

Billy's Alfred Hitchcock epsiode, Bang! You're Dead, is a good one. And timely, too.

Does anyone remember an episode about young nurses all living together in an old house on a stormy night. And one of them turns out to be a man, a serial killer? Scared me to death as a kid. Sound familiar?

r47, that ep is called An Unlocked Window

[quote]Does anyone remember an episode about young nurses all living together in an old house on a stormy night. And one of them turns out to be a man, a serial killer? Scared me to death as a kid. Sound familiar?

See r17.

This one is quite the showcase for Diana Hyland.

It's fun seeing John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands play stage actors.

This one gives you a rare 1960s view of Gloria Swanson, a wealthy woman with a daughter she insists is homely.

This one features Charles Busch-lookalike Olive Deering.

r50 Triggered.

"Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale" with Fess Parker (who played TV's Daniel Boone) as a small-town Andy Griffith-type sherrif...who finds that things do happen in small towns...is one of my favs.

Interesting how OP started this thread to discuss "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" but most of the posts have been about "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" instead. But technically it was the same show as "Presents" was simply expanded from 25 minutes to 50 minutes after the 7th season, renamed, and lasted 3 more years:

Breakdown has a great ending

Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, and Richard Chamberlain all made early appearances on the show

"To Catch a Butterfly" has it all — a bad seed, Ed Asner as an abusive father, and all the action taking place on the Universal backlot at the Desperate Housewives houses (Gaby and Susan).

Braford Dillman is another hour one - Isabel.

R41 I found The Crystal Trench ridiculous. Firstly they made little attempt to age the wife 40 years. Secondly she just turns against her dead husband because he has a locket with someone else's picture in it? What if it was his mother?!

The Crystal Trench.

The version I watched they aged the woman. But Patricia Owens has an odd face in that even when young she looks older. Hitchcock is perverse when he has the camera on the back of her head when she hears the news her husband is presumed dead.

Bradford Dillman was so gorgeous back in the day.

[quote]Bradford Dillman was so gorgeous back in the day.

Wifey-poo was no slouch in the looks department.

R63 it was a very half-hearted attempt at aging her especially since the sap she'd kept hanging on for 40 years actually did look aged up. I guess it was such a dumb ending for me, too quick and silly

These are fun! I watched the Gloria Swanson one last night. Yes, they shot it on the backlot, on Leave It to Beaver's block. Gloria got a great chance to ham it up big at the end.

THRILLER

A Wig for Miss DeVore

Kraft Suspense Theatre - "The Threatening Eye" (1964)

Stars Jack Klugman, Annie Fargé, Phyllis Thaxter, Pat O'Brien, Coleen Gray, Robert Clarke, Dabney Coleman. Directed by Ida Lupino. A cunning woman resorts to murder, slander and blackmail to force a bookkeeper to marry her.

An old AH thread, worth reading again...

OP, thank you for the word about ROKU. I'm streaming AH now and loving it all over again.

I watched this last night (don't read the summary, it's all spoiler). Weasely Roddy McDowall befriends a dotty spinster (the wonderful Ruth McDevitt) and convinces her that he's her nephew. Odd to see Roddy smacking around his girlfriend, who spends most of the show in a hot-pants ensemble. Plus a small role for Juanita Moore as a neighbor.

Ellen Burstyn *and* Tina Louise!

I've been watching so many of these recently

Saw "Murder Me Twice" where a woman commits murder under hypnosis. Or does she?

Any other good ones?

I watched "One of the Family" last night. Fun, but like many of the AH Hours it was about 10 minutes too long to support the story. The "surprise" reveal happened and there was still plenty of story to go.

The half-hour ones usually had the twist and a quick fade to black.

Oh no! Both AH Presents and the AH Hour are going off Peacock at the end of the month.

Tonight I watched "Jonathan," a story about a college boy who idolizes his father ... just blatant gay neurotic symbolism as he hates his stepmother for becoming his father's partner.

And great fun on the AH Hour with "Crimson Witness" — Peter Lawford and Roger C. Carmel as brothers (!) and Roger steals both Peter's job and his wife (Roger butches it up in the role). With untalented mannequin Martha Hyer and Julie London as a hotpants secretary in a succession of Lee Grant wigs.

R77 - One of the Family has the fabulous Olive Deering.

Big fun with "Out There — Darkness." Bette Davis at her most high-camp mannered as Miss Fox, a rich-bitch widow who hires her building's doorman to walk her spoiled toy poodle Vanessa. About half of the show is Bette delivering a monologue to Vanessa.

The doorman is played by an extremely handsome actor named James Congdon who worked for years but just never caught on.

I remember this one. Bette's dog leads into her a dark alley where she is confronted with a bad guy and she delivers a few Karate chops in self-defense.

My sister and I watched this as kids. I rarely found it very engaging. It was halfway to horror but it didn't really make me feel much.

[quote]About half of the show is Bette delivering a monologue to Vanessa.

About half of every Bette Davis picture is Bette heaving her low bosom and delivering endless monologues...

Lol, R83, she really seemed to have an aversion to functional brassieres, didn't she?

For anyone interested, MeTV is going back to the 30-minute episodes tonight.

Thank you, R85, and good evening.

I love both the 30 minute and 60 minute episodes and follow all the DL threads. My favorite is The Jar.

Here’s Billy Mumy discussing how he felt about Hitchcock.

R88, you're a bad man! You're a very bad man!