The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962)

I read everything, and that isn't bragging because I read some crap that I hide from visitors because it's embarrassing. My history books, my philosophy books, they are out in the open... but the Romance novels, the trash western and adventure novels, those are kept out of sight. I've already been caught by a roommate when I was reading "The Wolf and the Dove," because I found a paperback for $1 at a library and it was the only thing that looked entertaining at the time. Anyway Hitchcock reminds me of the old pulp novels I pick up at antique stores. It reminds me of some of the pulp megapacks you can buy on Amazon... only in some cases the stories are a lot better with Hitchcock. He stands the test of time, my wife is watching him independently. As in, it's OLD, she is a Millennial, and I don't have to force her to watch something old for once. Usually with Millennials and Gen-Z "Old=Evil" and they actively don't bother.... but she is getting older and starting to embrace that what came before can be good too. That is a high mark, it's not an easy feat to get her into black and white anything. She ate this up. It stands the test of time, in the 60s it was good, and in 2022 it's still good. Not much ages like fine wine. Hitchcock does.

Hitchcock and the commercials. Hitchcock's signature was his friendly rivalry with sponsors, which probably helped his sponsors simply by the recognition. It tough to rate an anthology, but most of these stories were very good. His best ones were with characters you didn't really relate with, but still felt something for. Such was the case for what I call his "masterpiece", with Gig Young and Robert Redford playing brothers with sky high superiority complexes in "A Piece of the Action", and with Robert Keith, Ed Byrnes, and Stephen McNally in "Final Escape", and with Mr. Haney himself in "The Jar". Then there were some comedies. One in which he purposely made it predictable that a "dining club" was eating its members when they got fat enough. The dark comedy was funny because of how oblivious the member was for being the next meal, even though everything pointed to it. There weren't many episodes where you felt you could relate to any of the characters, which is good, because most of the characters were fanatically arrogant, egotistical, or sadistic, so you didn't mind when they were buried alive or killed by mobsters who didn't like card cheats.