The Comic Critic's review of "Stage Fright"

When I watched Stage Fright, I was immediately struck that Alfred Hitchcock started the story with exposition dialogue. Immediate exposition is not something you present unless you are trying to set a tone. Think of the running paragraph of words that fade into the universe at the beginning of Star Wars, or fairy tales that begin, “Once upon a time, in a land, far, far away…” But the start of Stage Fright wasn’t like that. So I’m wondering just what Hitchcock is up to, and that thought nags at me throughout the film until, of course, Hitchcock does his reveal. That nagging little feeling keeps you unsettled all through the movie, and it makes you suspicious of all the characters. And some of the characters are put in the film for sheer fun. A good example is the “Lovely Ducks” lady. There’s really no reason to have her in the movie at all, except that the audience is treated to a wonderfully orchestrated moment of humor and setting that backhandedly builds suspense. Another lovely character in the movie is the father. Played by one of my favorite character actors, Alastair Sim, is so quirky and comfortable with being himself that the mother, played by Sybil Thorndyke, and he obviously live separate lives, but remain married. Hitchcock provides richness to even casual characters, which with the level of suspicion he’s introduced into Stage Fright, has you questioning whom he going to go deeper with, and what clues you will discover along the way. Once you get to the end of the movie, you realize it has been filled with Easter Eggs and clues throughout, and you want to go back and count them all as you view Stage Fright again.

The Comic Critic Reviews "Spellbound"

I’ve always loved watching Spellbound. The chemistry between Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck has us rooting for both of them as they fall in love. The fatherly figure who looks like a clone of Albert Einstein provides the perfect oiling of comic relief to keep the gears’ entertainment turning smoothly. The dream sequence has Salvador Dali’s fingerprints all over it. Spellbound was very well received. Of its six Oscar nominations, it won for Best Music. This might be in part because Spellbound was the first movie to make use of the Theremin. The haunting quality of the instrument was the perfect overtone for a suspense thriller involving psychoanalysis. Spellbound was beat out for Best Picture by Going My Way which won seven of the ten Oscars for which it was nominated. I mention that because so many things get lost if you don’t mention them, like twenty minutes. That’s how long the footage for the dream sequence was before David Selznick edited it down to two. We’ll never know what that amazing footage, collaboration between Hitchcock and Dali, might have looked like; it’s lost to the cutting room. But the two minutes that are in Spellbound held riveting imagery that I’ve never forgotten.

The Comic Critic Reviews Alfred Hitchock's "Rear Window"

I truly want to go on a rant to say how great a storyteller Alfred Hitchcock was. I want to pontificate at length the scope of his genius in layering his works with the superb efforts of his talent pool of collaborators. They were all masters in their fields. Take Edith Head, the costume designer. Once Hitchcock started working with her, he never let her go. Why? Take Grace Kelly’s entrance. You fall in love with her the moment she walks into the room, and you can’t help but love her for the rest of the movie. Grace Kelly’s excellent acting skills, aided by Edith Head’s design of her superbly elegant clothes, embodied her character. I want to rant on and on, but I’ll just say that everything about Rear Window is a joy: the set design, the script, the lighting, the cinematography, everything. As with every true artist, there is more to Hitchcock’s work than can be seen with a casual passing eye. His ability to lure you with a double-take is just the beginning of the adventure. No sooner have you glanced back than suddenly you find yourself caught up in a net of thoughts, conceptions, and twisted perception. In Rear Window, the roles within its established microcosm seem obvious. As the movie progresses, we are forced to reassess those roles and then explore ways test our assumptions, just like our hero. Alfred Hitchcock takes a rather plain murder mystery and creates a captivating adventure of the senses, as well as a friendly tweak to the mind.

As a side note, many suspect that the character Edna Mode in The Incredibles pays homage to Edith Head. I certainly hope it is. Her screen legacy of eight Oscar wins (out of thirty-five nominations throughout her fifty-year Hollywood career) for best costume design shouldn’t have ended with her last film, 1982’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, released a year after her death. After all, she was only 84.

The Comic Critic reviews Psycho

I thought about doing a strip without words, using only iconic pictures from Psycho. Well, there would have been one word, “Mother.” Instead, I decided to concentrate on what made this film great at the time and that still makes it great today. Hardboiled crime fiction was the rage at not only the box office, but on the radio as well. It saturated the marketplace so completely that when Hitchcock stood the movie on its ear by abruptly killing one story line (the hardboiled genre) and switching to another story line (the horror genre), the shock had quite an effect. It changed our expectations. This heightened sense of unease would lock the scenes that followed into our memories forever, and cause a few people to keep their shotguns in the shower.