TV Review: Alfred Hitchcock Presents
This half-hour anthology program ran from 1955-1962, when it was replaced by The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The series concentrated on suspense stories, with rare supernatural elements (and even these usually explained by the end of the story.) Mr. Hitchcock himself would appear as the host to introduce the episode, crack a dry joke or two, and provide an afterword.
The production values were high, and the show had some cracking good episodes, two of which I was able to watch on DVD.
“The Cheney Vase”: Darren McGavin plays Lyle Endicott, a museum worker whose lack of work ethic gets him fired in the first minute of the story. By chance, he learns that Miss Cheney (Patricia Collinge), a wheelchair-bound ceramic artist, is losing her personal assistant for several months, while the museum director that fired Lyle is also going on a long trip out of touch. While Miss Cheney is not a particularly wealthy woman, she does own a rare vase her archaeologist father discovered.
Lyle has a letter of recommendation forged so that he can move in as Miss Cheney’s assistant. His plan is to gradually isolate her from the outside world until he can find out where the Cheney Vase is hidden, then steal it. By the time Miss Cheney realizes what’s going on, it may already be too late….
Mr. McGavin does an excellent job as Lyle, a man who complains that things never go his way while sabotaging himself with negligent behavior. He puts on the fake charm, avoiding revealing his true self even to his lover until he’s sure she can’t do anything to stop him.
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”: Sadini the Great, a carnival magician, discovers a boy lying outside his trailer in Toledo, Ohio. Soft-hearted as carnies go, Sadini brings the boy, Hugo, inside. Sadini’s wife and lovely assistant Irene, is displeased, although she warms up to Hugo a bit when he calls her an angel.
It seems that Hugo is developmentally disabled, and escaped from a “home” where he was possibly mistreated. He has difficulty distinguishing reality from illusion, something that becomes especially obvious when he watches the devilish-appearing Sadini saw his wife in half as part of the magic act.
Irene, who is having an affair with high-wire artist George, comes up with a plan to have Hugo murder Sadini, supposedly to free Irene from his Satanic powers and allow Hugo to inherit the sorcerer’s wand. This plan goes horribly right, with an ending that was considered “too gruesome” by Revlon, the sponsor of the series.
Thus, this Robert Bloch-penned episode was not seen in regular network broadcast, but only in syndication, and fell into the public domain. You can find free versions of it on the internet. If you like EC Comics, you should really enjoy this episode.
