![Review Alfred Hitchcock / Alfred Hitchcock: The 39 Steps/The Lady Vanishes [1935]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21BJJTZKAHL._SL160_.jpg)
Release date: 2000-07-25
Run time: 204 min.
Price: £33.25
Review Alfred Hitchcock: The 39 Steps/The Lady Vanishes [1935] / Alfred Hitchcock:
![Review Leisure Entertainment / Sabotage [1936] (REGION 1) (NTSC)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5175ED50HRL._SL160_.jpg)
Actors & Directors
- Matthew Boulton
- Arnold Bell
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Frank Atkinson
- Sara Allgood
- Joyce Barbour
Run time: 81 min.
Creator: Louis Levy
Price: £1.12
Review Sabotage [1936] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Leisure Entertainment:
![Review Alfred Hitchcock / Alfred Hitchcock - The Master of Suspense [1927] (REGION 1) (NTSC)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QBVVAPQCL._SL160_.jpg)
Release date: 2003-10-07
Run time: 863 min.
Price: £6.56
Review Alfred Hitchcock - The Master of Suspense [1927] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Alfred Hitchcock:
Release date: 2001-11-05
Price: £2.68
Review Man Who Knew Too Much/39 Steps (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Alfred Hitchcock:
Release date: 2005-06-07
Run time: 938 min.
Price: £58.40
Review Alfred Hitchcock Collection / Alfred Hitchcock:
Actors & Directors
- Oskar Homolka
- Sylvia Sidney
- Joyce Barbour
- John Loder
- Desmond Tester
- Alfred Hitchcock
Price: £30.21
Review Sabotage (1936) (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Platinum Disc Corportation:This classic among Hitchcock's British movies of the 30s draws, unusually for him, on the work of a major writer for its source-Joseph Conrad's tale of seedy London-based espionage, The Secret Agent. Not that Hitch and his screenwriter, Charles Bennett, kept much of Conrad's novel beyond the bare bones of the plot. Verloc, an anarchist (played with appealing melancholy by Oscar Homolka), runs a South London fleapit cinema as a cover for his political activities. (In the original it's a porno bookstore-Hitch clearly thought the cinema was the nearest the censor would pass. ) His young wife (the sad-eyed Sylvia Sidney) knows nothing of his undercover assignments. She's devoted to her naïve younger brother, and when Verloc involves the lad in his schemes the results are catastrophic. The cast also features a young hero, a police detective woodenly played by John Loder, but Homolka and Sidney, as the sadly mismatched couple held together only by need, are unfailingly watchable as the brooding domestic atmosphere darkens towards tragedy. The trademark Hitchcock tension is well in evidence, though Hitch later reckoned he committed a "grave error" in letting one nail-biting scene end with the death of a sympathetic character (and a cute puppy). Though the film was shot almost entirely on studio sets, the director drew on his own Cockney childhood to create a wonderfully shabby, down-at-heel milieu of grubby London backstreets where the reek of gas lamps and rotting vegetables on the cobbles is all but palpable. -Philip Kemp.
![Review Delta / Murder [1930] (NTSC)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/217VY2VK46L._SL160_.jpg)
Actors & Directors
- Violet Farebrother
- Edward Chapman
- Esme V. Chaplin
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Norah Baring
- Donald Calthrop
Run time: 92 min.
Creator: John Reynders
Price: £7.17
Review Murder [1930] (NTSC) / Delta:This 1930 drama was an early field day for Alfred Hitchcock and his evolving ideas about the blurring of opposites: reality and illusion, guilt and innocence, observing and doing, men and women. A rare whodunit in the director's canon, the story of Murder finds a stage actress (Norah Baring) convicted of murdering a female friend. Herbert Marshall stars as a veteran theatre actor and, coincidentally, member of the jury who has grave doubts about the verdict and decides to investigate the crime on his own. His efforts lead him through a world with which he is sufficiently familiar-that of backstage intrigues-and toward what some critics have charged is an unfortunate link between villainy and a gay stereotype. But that limited critique completely misses the playful overlapping of faulty perceptions invited by this movie, in which Hitchcock deliberately confuses us at times about whether the action we're seeing is real or occurring on a stage. Even when the distinction is obvious, thematic echoes bounce wildly between the two, such as an early scene in which policemen observing a play don't realise the solution to the real murder is weirdly foretold in what they're watching. -Tom Keogh.
Actors & Directors
- Frank Atkinson
- Pamela Carne
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Mary Clare
- George Curzon
- Syd Crossley
Run time: 80 min.
Creator: Louis Levy
Price: £17.95
Review Young and Innocent [1937] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Alpha Video:Among Alfred Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood movies, 1938's Young and Innocent is a most unfairly overlooked classic. It's full of themes and stylistic touches that became permanent fixtures in his career. Based on Josephine Tey's novel A Shilling for Candles, the film title refers to the characters' outlook. However Hitchcock characteristically chips away at that innocence with flourishes of macabre humour, such as scenes of a dead rat at the lunch table and a hopeless conference with a defence lawyer, while suspense is heightened in a game of blindman's buff at a children 's party. The story concerns a typically Hitchcockian innocent man (Derrick de Marney) on the run, with a trivial object to find (a raincoat) that will prove his innocence. He's helped by a fiery young girl (Nova Pilbeam) who's unfortunately the daughter of the chief constable, but has some handy first aid skills. There's also an oppressive mother figure in the shape of an overbearing aunt (Mary Clare). Aside from these thematic traits, what remains impressive for viewers new or old is Hitchcock's technical set-pieces: a car sinks into a mineshaft, a railway station is recreated in miniature, and the twitchy-eyed murderer is finally located via an extended aerial tracking shot across a ballroom (pre-empting many similar shots, eg: Notorious). This sequence took two days to accomplish, and demonstrates the director was more than ready to move to the older and less innocent American industry. -Paul Tonks.
![Review Universal Pictures UK / Family Plot [1976]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41DY12M5KGL._SL160_.jpg)
Actors & Directors
- William Devane
- Karen Black
- Barbara Harris
- Bruce Dern
- Alfred Hitchcock
Run time: 115 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £5.50
Review Family Plot [1976] / Universal Pictures UK:Alfred Hitchcock's final film Family Plot is understated comic fun that mixes suspense with deft humour, thanks to a solid cast. The plot centres on the kidnapping of an heir and a diamond theft by a pair of bad guys led by Karen Black and William Devane. The cops seem befuddled, but that doesn't stop a questionable psychic (Barbara Harris) and her not overly bright boyfriend (Bruce Dern, in a rare good-guy role) from picking up the trail and actually solving the crime. Did she do it with actual psychic powers? That's part of the fun of Harris's enjoyably ditsy performance. -Marshall Fine.
Actors & Directors
- Desmond Tester
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Sylvia Sidney
- Joyce Barbour
- Oskar Homolka
- John Loder
Review A Woman Alone [1936]:This classic among Hitchcock's British movies of the 30s draws, unusually for him, on the work of a major writer for its source-Joseph Conrad's tale of seedy London-based espionage, The Secret Agent. Not that Hitch and his screenwriter, Charles Bennett, kept much of Conrad's novel beyond the bare bones of the plot. Verloc, an anarchist (played with appealing melancholy by Oscar Homolka), runs a South London fleapit cinema as a cover for his political activities. (In the original it's a porno bookstore-Hitch clearly thought the cinema was the nearest the censor would pass. ) His young wife (the sad-eyed Sylvia Sidney) knows nothing of his undercover assignments. She's devoted to her naïve younger brother, and when Verloc involves the lad in his schemes the results are catastrophic. The cast also features a young hero, a police detective woodenly played by John Loder, but Homolka and Sidney, as the sadly mismatched couple held together only by need, are unfailingly watchable as the brooding domestic atmosphere darkens towards tragedy. The trademark Hitchcock tension is well in evidence, though Hitch later reckoned he committed a "grave error" in letting one nail-biting scene end with the death of a sympathetic character (and a cute puppy). Though the film was shot almost entirely on studio sets, the director drew on his own Cockney childhood to create a wonderfully shabby, down-at-heel milieu of grubby London backstreets where the reek of gas lamps and rotting vegetables on the cobbles is all but palpable. -Philip Kemp.
Release date: 2004-10-05
Run time: 840 min.
Price: £25.95
Review Alfred Hitchcock (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Alfred Hitchcock:
![Review Madacy / Alfred Hitchcock Collection, Vol. 1: Sabotage [1936] (REGION 1) (NTSC)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511P5E99WQL._SL160_.jpg)
Actors & Directors
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Desmond Tester
- Oskar Homolka
- John Loder
- Sylvia Sidney
- Joyce Barbour
Run time: 76 min.
Price: £33.83
Review Alfred Hitchcock Collection, Vol. 1: Sabotage [1936] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Madacy:This classic among Hitchcock's British movies of the 30s draws, unusually for him, on the work of a major writer for its source-Joseph Conrad's tale of seedy London-based espionage, The Secret Agent. Not that Hitch and his screenwriter, Charles Bennett, kept much of Conrad's novel beyond the bare bones of the plot. Verloc, an anarchist (played with appealing melancholy by Oscar Homolka), runs a South London fleapit cinema as a cover for his political activities. (In the original it's a porno bookstore-Hitch clearly thought the cinema was the nearest the censor would pass. ) His young wife (the sad-eyed Sylvia Sidney) knows nothing of his undercover assignments. She's devoted to her naïve younger brother, and when Verloc involves the lad in his schemes the results are catastrophic. The cast also features a young hero, a police detective woodenly played by John Loder, but Homolka and Sidney, as the sadly mismatched couple held together only by need, are unfailingly watchable as the brooding domestic atmosphere darkens towards tragedy. The trademark Hitchcock tension is well in evidence, though Hitch later reckoned he committed a "grave error" in letting one nail-biting scene end with the death of a sympathetic character (and a cute puppy). Though the film was shot almost entirely on studio sets, the director drew on his own Cockney childhood to create a wonderfully shabby, down-at-heel milieu of grubby London backstreets where the reek of gas lamps and rotting vegetables on the cobbles is all but palpable. -Philip Kemp.
![Review ITV DVD / Secret Agent [1936]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515ADF80TBL._SL160_.jpg)
Actors & Directors
- Alfred Hitchcock
- John Gielgud
- Percy Marmont
- Peter Lorre
- Madeleine Carroll
- Robert Young
Run time: 82 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.95
Review Secret Agent [1936] / ITV DVD:One of Alfred Hitchcock's finest pre-Hollywood films, the 1936 Secret Agent stars a young John Gielgud as a British spy whose death is faked by his intelligence superiors. Reinvented with another identity and outfitted with a wife (Madeleine Carroll), Gielgud's character is sent on assignment with a cold-blooded accomplice (Peter Lorre) to assassinate a German agent. En route, the counterfeit couple keeps company with an affable American (Robert Young), who turns out to be more than he seems after the wrong man is murdered by Gielgud and Lorre. Dense with interwoven ideas about false names and real identities, about appearances as lies and the brutality of the hidden, and about the complicity of those who watch the anarchy that others do, Secret Agent declared that Alfred Hitchcock was well along the road to mastery as a filmmaker and, more importantly, knew what it was he wanted to say for the rest of his career. -Tom Keogh One of Alfred Hitchcock's finest pre-Hollywood films, the 1936 Secret Agent stars a young John Gielgud as a British spy whose death is faked by his intelligence superiors. Reinvented with a new identity and outfitted with a wife (Madeleine Carroll), Gielgud's character is sent on assignment with a cold-blooded accomplice (Peter Lorre) to assassinate a German agent. En route, the counterfeit couple keeps company with an affable American (Robert Young), who turns out to be more than he seems after the wrong man is murdered by Gielgud and Lorre. Dense with interwoven ideas about false names and real identities, about appearances as lies and the brutality of the hidden, and about the complicity of those who watch the anarchy that others do, Secret Agent declared that Alfred Hitchcock was well along the road to mastery as a filmmaker and, more importantly, knew what it was he wanted to say for the rest of his career. -Tom Keogh.
Actors & Directors
- Malcolm Keen
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Anny Ondra
- Carl Brisson
Price: £10.99
Review Manxman:Poor fisherman Pete falls in love with Kate, the daughter of a landlord on Man island. Pete decides to leave on his ship to earn some money and then to marry the girl. Before leaving, Pete asks his friend Philip to take care of Kate, but the young man is in love with her too. There comes the tragic news: Pete's ship is wrecked. Philip and Kate have to hide no more and they plan to marry; however, Pete is not dead.
Release date: 2004-07-23
Price: £6.76
Review Alfred Hitchcock: Blackmail/Easy Virtue/Rich & Strange/The Sorcerer's Apprentice (NTSC) / Alfred Hitchcock:
Release date: 2004-07-23
Price: £27.95
Review Alfred Hitchock: Secret Agent/The Skin Game Number 17/The Ring (NTSC) / Alfred Hitchcock:
Actors & Directors
- Robert Young
- Madeleine Carroll
- John Gielgud
- Percy Marmont
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Peter Lorre
Run time: 83 min.
Price: £9.95
Review Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent [1936] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Diamond Entertainment Corp.:One of Alfred Hitchcock's finest pre-Hollywood films, the 1936 Secret Agent stars a young John Gielgud as a British spy whose death is faked by his intelligence superiors. Reinvented with another identity and outfitted with a wife (Madeleine Carroll), Gielgud's character is sent on assignment with a cold-blooded accomplice (Peter Lorre) to assassinate a German agent. En route, the counterfeit couple keeps company with an affable American (Robert Young), who turns out to be more than he seems after the wrong man is murdered by Gielgud and Lorre. Dense with interwoven ideas about false names and real identities, about appearances as lies and the brutality of the hidden, and about the complicity of those who watch the anarchy that others do, Secret Agent declared that Alfred Hitchcock was well along the road to mastery as a filmmaker and, more importantly, knew what it was he wanted to say for the rest of his career. -Tom Keogh One of Alfred Hitchcock's finest pre-Hollywood films, the 1936 Secret Agent stars a young John Gielgud as a British spy whose death is faked by his intelligence superiors. Reinvented with a new identity and outfitted with a wife (Madeleine Carroll), Gielgud's character is sent on assignment with a cold-blooded accomplice (Peter Lorre) to assassinate a German agent. En route, the counterfeit couple keeps company with an affable American (Robert Young), who turns out to be more than he seems after the wrong man is murdered by Gielgud and Lorre. Dense with interwoven ideas about false names and real identities, about appearances as lies and the brutality of the hidden, and about the complicity of those who watch the anarchy that others do, Secret Agent declared that Alfred Hitchcock was well along the road to mastery as a filmmaker and, more importantly, knew what it was he wanted to say for the rest of his career. -Tom Keogh.
![Review Universal Pictures UK / The Hitchcock Collection, Volume 2 [1958]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41H5ZR9GFWL._SL160_.jpg)
Actors & Directors
- Rod Taylor
- Dany Robin
- Jon Finch
- John Vernon
- Michel Piccoli
- Alfred Hitchcock
Run time: 720 min.
Price: £69.99
Review The Hitchcock Collection, Volume 2 [1958] / Universal Pictures UK:A welcome second volume of classics from the Master of Suspense, this seven-disc Hitchcock Collection box-set consists of the following: The Birds: Based on a Daphne Du Maurier short story, The Birds (1963) is Hitchcock at his most terrifying, as the residents of a small town are attacked by thousands of apparently homicidal birds. Marnie: Tippi Hedren and newly Bonded Sean Connery star in this excellent 1964 thriller, which finds a calculating thief who robs her employers pursued by a her new boss, who is desperate to unlock her secrets Torn Curtain: This 1966 spy thriller, pairing Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, finds Newman as a world-famous physicist intent on defecting to East Berlin in order to obtain funding for his latest project. Topaz: Based on the Leon Uris novel, Hitch's 51st film, made in 1969, concerns a CIA agent who learns of Russian missiles in Cuba. With the aid of a French agent, they negotiate a plethora of corruption and murder. Frenzy: This critically acclaimed 1972 film was Hitch's first British-made film for more than 20 years. A classic Hitch story of an innocent man accused of being the "necktie murderer"-a vicious sex criminal terrorising London-he eludes the authorities and seeks the real killer. Family Plot: Hitchcock's final film, made in 1976, is a blackly funny mix of murder, theft and kidnapping as a cab-driver and a psychic team up to find a dead man-not actually dead-in exchange for a $10,000 reward. Bonus Disc-Vertigo: An irreducible masterpiece, this 1958 double-identity thriller finds Hitch serving aces, as Jimmy Stewart's detective is drawn in to a complex plot when the girl he loves apparently falls to her death. On the DVD: Like the first volume, this is an equally impressive package that will satisfy the rotund fright-master's fans. Along with the standard selection of trailers, production notes and picture galleries, each disc houses an impressive "making of" documentary, each expertly detailing Hitch's meticulous work. [+]The Birds features Tippi Hedren's screen test and-in storyboard form-deleted scenes and the alternative ending. Topaz has no less that three alternative endings, while Torn Curtain includes scenes scored by composer Bernard Herrmann before his music was rejected by Hitch. The Vertigo disc features an excellent group commentary from producer Herbert Coleman and restoration experts Robert A Harris and James Katz, as well as a documentary, "Obsessed with Vertigo". Housed in attractive fold-out packaging, this is an excellent opportunity to obtain a rich slice of Hitchcock's dark magic. -Danny Graydon.
![Review Warner Home Video / Hitchcock - Dial M For Murder, North By Northwest - Video Double Pack [1954]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41XGKF8PKKL._SL160_.jpg)
Actors & Directors
- James Mason
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Grace Kelly
- Ray Milland
- Cary Grant
Run time: 231 min.
Price: £9.99
Review Hitchcock - Dial M For Murder, North By Northwest - Video Double Pack [1954] / Warner Home Video:
Actors & Directors
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Ray Milland
- Anthony Dawson
- John Williams (II)
- Robert Cummings
- Grace Kelly
Review Dial M for Murder:A suave tennis player (Ray Milland) plots the perfect murder, the dispatching of his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly), who is having an affair with a writer (Robert Cummings). Amazingly, the wife manages to stave off her attacker, a twist of fate that challenges the hubby's talent for improvisation. Alfred Hitchcock wisely stuck to the stage origins of Dial M for Murder, ignoring the temptation to "open up" the material from the home of the unhappy couple. The result may not be one of Hitchcock's deepest films but it's a thoroughly engaging chamber movie. It also features Grace Kelly at her loveliest, the same year she made Rear Window with Hitchcock. Dial M for Murder was filmed in the briefly trendy 3-D process and Hitchcock shot some scenes to bring out the depth of the 3-D field; it's especially good for the nail-biting attempted murder of Kelly and her desperate reach for a pair of scissors that seems to be just outside her grasp. However, the film was rarely shown with the proper 3-D projection, going out "flat" instead (a 1980 reissue restored the process for a limited theatrical release). Dial M was remade in 1998 as A Perfect Murder,a film that changed and expanded the material, with no improvement on the clean, witty original. -Robert Horton.
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Alfred Hitchcock: The 39 Steps/The Lady Vanishes [1935], Sabotage [1936] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Alfred Hitchcock - The Master of Suspense [1927] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Man Who Knew Too Much/39 Steps (REGION 1) (NTSC), Alfred Hitchcock Collection, Sabotage (1936) (REGION 1) (NTSC), Murder [1930] (NTSC), Young and Innocent [1937] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Family Plot [1976], A Woman Alone [1936], Alfred Hitchcock (REGION 1) (NTSC), Alfred Hitchcock Collection, Vol. 1: Sabotage [1936] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Secret Agent [1936], Manxman, Alfred Hitchcock: Blackmail/Easy Virtue/Rich & Strange/The Sorcerer's Apprentice (NTSC), Alfred Hitchock: Secret Agent/The Skin Game Number 17/The Ring (NTSC), Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent [1936] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Hitchcock Collection, Volume 2 [1958], Hitchcock - Dial M For Murder, North By Northwest - Video Double Pack [1954], Dial M for Murder |
