BEFORE: I took my crashed DVR into the TW service center, which is sort of misnamed because they don't perform any technical service there on the equipment - I guess they do customer service, but the name implies that they'll fix their equipment, like an auto service center. All they know how to do is to swap out the cable box, so I got a new box with a larger hard-drive, and lost about a week's worth of TV, mostly Jeopardy! and Letterman, and the Tony Awards. I caught up on most other shows OnDemand over the weekend. Oh, I lost a bunch of episodes of "Chopped", but I'm sure Food Network will rerun those.
Hitchcock carries over again as a cameo actor, appearing tonight as a spectator at a political rally.
THE PLOT: A serial killer is murdering London women with a necktie. The police have a suspect... but he's the wrong man.
AFTER: Now I really do feel like I've come full circle, because the first Hitchcock film I watched, a month and a half ago, was "The Lodger", which also featured a London serial killer, and also featured a man falsely accused of being the strangler. So in a way this is Hitch's modern update of one of his earliest silent films.
I also noticed a bunch of references to other Hitchcock films, so clearly he was building on what he'd done before, trying to tie it all together. The man whose ex-wife gets murdered, causing the police to focus on him - that's straight out of "Strangers on a Train". And the killer who has a close relationship with his mother has the ring of "Psycho" about it. The hero who goes on the run to prove his innocence - well, Hitchcock used that time and time again, because it works. Also, the way that the one smart policeman discusses various aspects of the case with his wife, dissecting the "perfect murder" cases.
On the downside, there's no real star power here. Casting one or two stars like, I don't know, Michael Caine, would have gone a long way. (Hmm, the trivia section says Caine lobbied for a role, but didn't hear back from Hitchcock. I swear, I chose him at random.) The story should focus on an everyman, but he shouldn't have to look like a nobody.
Then there are some (unintended?) comedy bits, which not only go on too long, they feel like they don't really belong here. It doesn't matter one bit to the murder investigation that the chief inspector's wife can't cook - yet three times in the film it's the go-to gag, he sits down to dinner and his wife has served him something undefinable, which we assume tastes terrible. But repeating the joke doesn't give it any relevance.
Starring Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Alec McOwen, Anna Massey, Jean Marsh, Clive Swift, Billie Whitelaw, Barbara Leigh-Hunt.
RATING: 5 out of 10 sacks of potatoes
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