Hitchcock-like Movies

Alfred Hitchcock was unquestionably one of the greatest and most influential directors of all time and it didn’t take long before some of his peers recognized his talent and borrowed from (O.K. copied) his ideas whether they were camera techniques common plot elements or his mastery of suspense.

I’ve reviewed 48 of Hitchcock’s 54 feature films for this site. One of the first movie books I ever purchased was The Films of Alfred Hitchcock by Robert Harris and Michael Lasky another was Donald Spoto’s biography. Hitchcock’s thrillers often featured: bloodless murders innocent men accused of crimes that must escape to prove their innocence cool blondes sexually suggestive double entendre dialogue and other dark humor unique camera angles and/or edits. Whether influenced by the master or not these are some films that I think exhibit a certain Hitchcockian quality:

• Night Must Fall (1937) – what’s in the hat box could it be the missing head of a killer’s victim? Dame May Whitty plays a wheelchair-bound old woman who doesn’t realize that she’s in danger from a charming man (Robert Montgomery) in her midst. Her homely niece (Rosalind Russell) suspects something but she is distracted by her attraction to him.
• The Spiral Staircase (1946) – Dorothy McGuire is the “blond” also a mute that’s endangered by a serial killer who chooses his victims for their imperfections; Hitchcock loved to use staircases in his films (almost as many times as Warner Bros. did in Bette Davis movies).
• Undercurrent (1946) is not a great movie but it copies Suspicion (1941) without the “Cary Grant can’t be a killer” cop-out at the end; features Robert Taylor Katharine Hepburn Robert Mitchum
• Monsieur Verdoux (1947) – Chaplin’s black comedy not only features bloodless off-screen murders but actually preceded Hitch’s similar body mystery The Trouble With Harry (1955)
• Shadow on the Wall (1950) – Zachary Scott is falsely accused and only the elaborately choreographed titled sequence (the kind the Master of Suspense loved to do) saves him in the end
• Kind Lady (1951) features an imperiled wealthy wheelchair-bound old woman also. A remake of the 1935 original featuring Aline MacMahon in the title role Ethel Barrymore is held hostage in her London townhouse by an audaciously self confident swindler and his crude accomplices. It includes the bloodless murder of her domestic help and an ending that Hitchcock would be proud of too.
• Diabolique (1955) – from Henri-Georges Clouzot and starring Simone Signoret is quite good.
• Witness for the Prosecution (1957) – Billy Wilder succeeded where Hitchcock had failed ten years earlier with The Paradine Case (1947) in using the talents of actor Charles Laughton to create a compelling British courtroom drama with startling revelations and twists to the end.
• The Gazebo (1959) – in this black comedy with a twist ending the blackmailed writer character that Glenn Ford plays even calls Hitchcock on the telephone to get advice about how to dispose of the body!
• Midnight Lace (1960) – Doris Day plays a blonde in danger from her husband and the telephone (on which she hears a threatening voice) plays a key role not unlike Dial M for Murder (1954)
• The Secret Partner (1961) – a deftly written and executed British crime drama that feels Hitchcockian in parts (admittedly I’m stretching it a bit here to introduce you to this title;-)
• The Prize (1963) – of course this one was written by Ernest Lehman which accounts for its North By Northwest (1959) feel; Hitch later used this thriller’s star (Paul Newman) in the similarly plotted (though not Lehman written) Torn Curtain (1966). Elke Sommer plays the blonde and even Hitchcock regular Leo G. Carroll appears in this one!

I don’t know if And Then There Were None (1945) from director Rene Clair (screenwriter Dudley Nichols adapted the Agatha Christie classic “Ten Little Indians”) qualifies – it’s more mystery than thriller – but since I included The Secret Partner (1961) above I thought that I should at least mention it. There is a Mel Brooks spoof – High Anxiety (1977) – and also several homages to director Alfred Hitchcock’s craft like Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) as well as those forgettable remakes (not worth mentioning).

© 2007 Turner Classic Movies – this article originally appeared on TCM’s official blog