At a time when the film industry thought it was superior to the television industry, Alfred Hitchcock brought his cache as the Master of Suspense and a four-time, Oscar-nominated director to the medium in 1955 by creating, producing, and hosting Alfred Hitchcock Presents, an anthology series of suspense and mystery. He even directed 17 episodes, including the first, “Revenge,” which co-starred Vera Miles, who would go on to play Lila Crane in Psycho. Another connection between the movie and the series is the author of the source novel, Robert Bloch, who would contribute stories and teleplays.
Buy Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Legacy CollectionThe series debuted on CBS for its first five seasons before moving to NBC for the remaining two. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Legacy Collection offers all 263 episodes from the seven-season run, before it became The Alfred Hitchcock Hour for three more years. Spread across 34 DVDs, the series is collected by season. For the first season, a summary graphic is available before each episode.
The show was notable for its opening sequence. A nine-stroke drawing of and by Alfred Hitchcock appears as Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette” plays. Hitch in silhouette walks into frame and then it cuts to his humorous introduction of the episode. He would also appear in the epilogue, as he explains, “to tidy up afterwards for those who don’t understand the endings,” but it actually seems a way to appease those, such as sponsors, censors, or viewers, who wouldn’t like seeing people getting away with committing bad acts.
Over the seven seasons, there was one extended story, the three-part “I Killed the Count” based on the play of the same name by Alec Coppel, who wrote the screenplay for Vertigo. Other notable writers whose work appeared in the series include Ray Bradbury, John Cheever, Roald Dahl, Philip Roth, and Ambrose Bierce, whose “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was adapted in 1959 and again for a short French film in 1961, which aired on The Twilight Zone in 1964.
Bonus Features:
- Season 1, Disc 6: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Look Back (15 min)
- Season 4, Disc 4: Fasten Your Seatbelt: The Thrilling Art of Alfred Hitchcock (6 min) – Directors John Carpenter, Guillermo del Toro, and William Friedkin sing Hitch’s praises.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents is a compelling TV series, comprised of nearly 300 well-written stories brought to life by talented casts. The familiar faces feature well-known actors of the time, like Bette Davis and Claude Rains, and up-and-comers like Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, and Robert Redford. Suspense fans will enjoy having The Legacy Collection on the shelf. The picture looks good, and the audio is free from hiss or defect.
