Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series)

The Perfect Crime (1957)

Vincent Price: Charles Courtney

Photos 

Quotes 

• Charles Courtney : Do you like Brahms, Mr Gregory?

  John Gregory : Ordinairily but not when it turns out to be a death march.

• John Gregory : But tell me, why must the perfect crime necessarily be murder?

  Charles Courtney : Well, is it not the most reprehensible? Human life is what we prize the most, what we do our best to protect. To take a life with a skill that eludes detection is unquestionably the ideal criminal action.

  John Gregory : You make it sound... pleasant.

  Charles Courtney : Surgeons talk of beautiful cases, don't they? That's precisely my attitude. No, if it's to be murder, then it must be the purest kind. Rule out the crime passional, hot blood begets numerous blunders. No, the perfect crime must be a work of art. Like the ceramics I make here in my own workshop, done for arts sake alone, not for gain. There is only one kind of murder that I consider pure. That's the murder of elimination, the murder in which the sole object is to remove the victim from the world.

• Charles Courtney : [about a CPA he once tracked down]  He never made a mistake in his life even in long division when he was back at school.

• Charles Courtney : It was murder for millions.

• Charles Courtney : Some sportsmen decorate their walls with the head of a lion they once shot in Tanganyika or some unfortunate rhino caught sunbathing in the Congo. These, Mr Gregory, are trophies, perfect memories of so very many crimes, but tombstones to the stupidity of criminals.

  John Gregory : What is the empty space there in the centre?

  Charles Courtney : For the perfect crime.

• John Gregory : For some inexplicable reason, maybe because I can't really understand men like you. I've always wanted to learn about you, but it's impossible. Just below that surface of studied courtesy, Mr Courtney, lies a cover and the real Charles Courtney lies beneath that cover that is impervious, untouched and unmoved.

  Charles Courtney : You're being ridiculous.

  John Gregory : You live in a quiet little place of your own, shut off like some lost tribe of aborigines in some forgotten quarter of the globe.