I gave the Alfred Hitchcock hour a pretty high rating (8) simply because I've always liked stories with a little bit of a twist. I gave the rating before I even watched any of the episodes, just because it was Hitchcock.
I'm bingewatching this through the pandemic and I'm probably going to lower my rating to around six stars, mostly because these are very uneven. And so far I can only think of two or three that were real standouts that I enjoyed and really had that Hitchcockian twist. Some of these don't have any twist at all and really shouldn't be part of the Hitchcock collection, so you will have some real duds in here that just sort of play out and then end.
The one that immediately comes to mind that I thought was outstanding is called, The Paragon. That one really held my attention - a real gem among some really bad stuff.
Unfortunately, switching to an hour format meant that a lot of these stories were stretched out and padded and not for the better.
I think the best thing about the series is the fact that we get to see some well-known stars before they were well known and we get to see them when they were very young.
I also want to point out that a lot of these really have not aged that well. I noticed initially that all the cast was white and then we start to see some Asians and we start to see some black characters, which was welcome. Hispanic actors were well presented and even actors that were Mexican were actually presented in a positive light. What was also nice is that these characters were just part of the scenes or had some lines in their scenes and they were not stereotypes. They are playing secretaries, doctors, mothers, the police. Yes, there's a maid or two but even then the characters are played with dignity. So kudos to Hitchcock for giving minority actors of that time parts that didn't play on stereotypes of their race.
The other thing I want to point out, even though I'm not a prude, but just became so oticeable as every single one of these I've seen so far, everybody drinks and smokes. I think out of the 45 or so episodes that I watched so far there are maybe three episodes where someone isn't knocking back a drink. It looks so strange looking back.A trend that I've noticed in more recent movies is there's always somebody vomiting. I think in one week alone I saw five scenes of vomiting so I guess there are trends.
Anyway, not so much a critique it's just some thoughts as I've been watching these...
The other thing of course is all the women are hysterical and all the men are their and all the men are their protectors.
There's a lot of overacting as well and I'm so glad that acting began to become more natural without the histrionics and the phony English upper crust fake accents that you would see and hear in a lot of American movies of that time and before.
I'm bingewatching this through the pandemic and I'm probably going to lower my rating to around six stars, mostly because these are very uneven. And so far I can only think of two or three that were real standouts that I enjoyed and really had that Hitchcockian twist. Some of these don't have any twist at all and really shouldn't be part of the Hitchcock collection, so you will have some real duds in here that just sort of play out and then end.
The one that immediately comes to mind that I thought was outstanding is called, The Paragon. That one really held my attention - a real gem among some really bad stuff.
Unfortunately, switching to an hour format meant that a lot of these stories were stretched out and padded and not for the better.
I think the best thing about the series is the fact that we get to see some well-known stars before they were well known and we get to see them when they were very young.
I also want to point out that a lot of these really have not aged that well. I noticed initially that all the cast was white and then we start to see some Asians and we start to see some black characters, which was welcome. Hispanic actors were well presented and even actors that were Mexican were actually presented in a positive light. What was also nice is that these characters were just part of the scenes or had some lines in their scenes and they were not stereotypes. They are playing secretaries, doctors, mothers, the police. Yes, there's a maid or two but even then the characters are played with dignity. So kudos to Hitchcock for giving minority actors of that time parts that didn't play on stereotypes of their race.
The other thing I want to point out, even though I'm not a prude, but just became so oticeable as every single one of these I've seen so far, everybody drinks and smokes. I think out of the 45 or so episodes that I watched so far there are maybe three episodes where someone isn't knocking back a drink. It looks so strange looking back.A trend that I've noticed in more recent movies is there's always somebody vomiting. I think in one week alone I saw five scenes of vomiting so I guess there are trends.
Anyway, not so much a critique it's just some thoughts as I've been watching these...
The other thing of course is all the women are hysterical and all the men are their and all the men are their protectors.
There's a lot of overacting as well and I'm so glad that acting began to become more natural without the histrionics and the phony English upper crust fake accents that you would see and hear in a lot of American movies of that time and before.