Shark Bytes

Definitely, when they expanded to an hour. Most of them are padded with drawn-out dialogue and such, which takes all of the suspense out of the episode. The 1/2 hour ones are very concentrated due to lack of time- so they get straight to the point and usually the shocker is revealed in the last 30 seconds of the show, making the whole thing worth watching. The hour-long ones are more character-driven than plot-driven, so again the suspense is sacrificed as a result. They're not bad, just not as good.

Also the episode of the frozen lamp as murder weapon...this is actually a short story of Roald Dahl. (There were more episodes where his shorts stories were featured).

In reality, the show wasn't especially creative. The stories were inspired by existing muyth and sometimes even older films. ie the episode with the woman whose mother vanishes in an hotel and suddenly nobody wants to have seen her and in the end she is able to prove that the hotel covered her death up because she died of the black death. The story is nearly identical to an old silent film (the only difference is that in that film a man takes advantage of the vularibility of a young woman and when he learns how she died he knows he will die also). Both stories are surently inspired by the "Death in Venice" written by Thomas Mann.

It were never the stories who were inventive. But each of them where perfectly staged. Which is the reason, this show never jumped.

It never jumped the shark. As even though the Hour shows weren't as good as the half-hour shows. You really can't help but see Hitch look good in a tux IMHO!

ANOTHER memorable episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour"was 1962/CBS "Annabel",which starred Dean Stockwell as a scientist who is madly in love with a co-worker named "Annabel",who is married,and neither her or her husband like him,and wnnt him to back off and forget about her.And here's the twist ending:he kills BOTH of them,and installs her body in the pillars of a house he built for them-with the police sirens howling in the background.So he DID get his just desserts.My verdict on "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour"-some were REALLY great,but others were padded and boring.

Remember "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour "episode "Death Scene",from 1965/NBC,starring Vera Miles,James Farentino and the late John Carradine?This was a memorable tale about a mechanic(James Farentino)who falls in love with the daughter(or so he thinks-played by Vera Miles)of a renowned director(played by the late John Carradine).Well,anyway,the mechanic (and friend)makes fun of the director's favorite film,the director threatens to cancel the wedding,the mechanic plots the murder of the director-but the director and his daughter kill the mechanic to collect the insurance money,--and she reveals by taking off her makeup,that she (although she says she is the daughter)is actually the director's wife.A totally unezpected ending.And they do NOT live happily ever after.

Never jumped! They just don't make 'em like this anymore. The craft of short story writing is a dead one and many of these stories were adaptations of pieces in Alfred Hitchock's Mystery Magazine. So many memorable episodes... who can forget Joseph Cotton as the guy who was paralyzed in an auto accident and, being taken for dead is about to be the victim of an autopsy when his eyes well up with tears, saving him from the knife! Most of the 1/2 hour episode was simply a series of different shots of Cotton in the crumpled auto, motionless, with him doing a disembodied voiceover. Folks just can't write like that anymore.

Even the first episode called "Revenge" with Raplh Meeker and Vera Miles was outstanding... a guy, in a fit of rage, kills the wrong man. Disembodied human limbs, murder, crime, black humor and, of course, Hitch continually picking on the sponsors... what great television!

Alfred Hitchock was a genius, way ahead of his time, and an unprecedented contributor to the entertainment industry. Alfred Hitchcock Presents was as brilliantly presented and executed as his movies were, a magical and intriguing combination of suspense, romance and black humor. Mr. Hitchcock proved undoubtedly that a show doesn't need gratuitous sex or violence to be entertaining and appealing to an intelligent audience.

The show never JTS but if (as already stated) it tried to be realistic at times it could stink out loud. And there were way too many anthology shows (like One Step Beyond) for just TZ-AHP comparisons. And sometimes AHP was supernatural or scifi itself.

When Alfred Hitchcock Presents was still showing on Nick at Night, I remember seeing one episode, "Bang, You're Dead" about a little boy who likes playing with his toy pistol accidentally switching with a real gun with one bullet inside. Since this was directed by the Master of Suspense himself, there are very effective angles which show how close to shooting with the actual bullet the boy gets whenever he keeps pulling the trigger! The end when he misses the maid he was shooting at is one of the most shocking I've seen on a family channel at the time (and possibly on network television too!). I later read this might have been Hitch's response to having had that teenage boy unknowingly carrying a film can with a bomb die in Sabotage (1936). Obviously, he didn't want to alienate his audience.

Never jumped. Every episode exuded something quietly eerie; the fifties simplicity of the production values and storylines enhanced it all the more. Right from the ghostly music accompanying the title opticals to the very last note of the "Marionette" march, I was always overcome with a wonderfully creepy-crawly feeling, as though I were alone in the Norman Bates House and it were 20 degrees outside. Beautifully done--in my mind, AHP was the non-science-fiction counterpart to The Twilight Zone.

Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre were two of the coolest human beings who ever set foot on Earth. They came together in 1960 to star in "Man of the South", based on a story by the great Roald Dahl. If down and out gambler McQueen can ignite his lighter ten times in a row, Lorre will give him his luxurious convertible. But if the lighter misses, McQueen will give up the little finger on his left hand. The suspense was unbearable as McQueen kept flicking the lighter- one, two, three.... Series producer and actor Norman Lloyd ("St. Elsewhere", "Saboteur") directed this episode brilliantly. But how could Hitchcock have passed on directing this great script himself? He must have been too busy working on "Psycho". (McQueen would have been great in the John Gavin role in "Psycho".) McQueen was moonlighting from his neat series "Wanted: Dead or Alive". Steve McQueen was thirty years old, and at this point in his career everything he touched was golden.

Ok. Listen up please! AHP came before Twilight Zone by four years. And there were scores of other anthology shows on too all during the 1950's. Can we stop comparing AHP to TZ? There was a few horrible eps of AHP. It sucked whenever they tried to get realistic in certain eps (like one about a guy getting arrested and his adventures in jail) but the worst ep of this or any series ever by and far came in an ep starring Stanley Adams (Cyrano Jones in Trouble With Tribbles). Adams had little to do as the cop who came to tell a lady that her live-in niece's pen pal has escaped from jail. We could guess instantly that the lady and not her niece, whose away on a trip, is going to turn out to be the escaped convict's real pen pal. The writing, acting, direction and plot of this ultra-horrible, predictable ep sunk the AHP show and all tv to an unprecedented low. As for AHH well the stories were somewhat more boring.

I don't think it ever JTS, although the episodes (half-hour) in the last season got a little too gruesome. I think of "Beta Delta Gamma", where a guy was buried alive, and "The Silk Petticoat", where a woman's tongue was removed as punishment for her adultery. Both formats have some really great episodes. Among my half-hour favorites are "Anniversary Gift" (Harry Morgan buys--he thinks--a poisonous snake to kill his wife), "Coming, Mama" (Eileen Heckart kills her mother in order to be free to marry), "The Baby Sitter" (nosy Thelma Ritter gets her comeuppance after blabbing about a murder), and my all-time favorite, "Party Line" (Judy Canova--a damned good performance from this country comic!--is stalked by a revenge-seeking man). Among my hour-long favorites are "Insomnia" (Tony Randall is a drunk), "How to Get Rid of Your Wife" (Bob Newhart wants to dump spouse Jane Withers), "The Return of Verge Likens" (Peter Fonda gets revenge on his father's murderer), and "The Second Wife" (June Lockhart--a great performance--thinks that her new husband killed his first wife). So you see, there are lots of fine episodes throughout this show's 10-year-run. I wish that we could have a comparable anthology series today! But could anybody top the great Hitch in those opening and closing framing scenes? I don't think so. (P.S. I was glad to see a poster mention the episode "An Out for Oscar"! Larry Storch was so good in it as the henpecked guy who wins out in the end. I remember how good he was, and I bet I haven't seen the show in 30 years!

The show titled "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" never jumped the shark, in my opinion. However, "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," despite some great episodes like "The Jar" and "Consider Her Ways" just wasn't up to the standards of the half-hour episodes. The great O. Henry format of those half-hour shows just could not be carried over to the hour-long format. And some of the hour long episodes seem to be dragged out, and definitely lacking in suspense, which Hitchcock was the master of.