The Anticipation of Terror

"Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs."

During my early formative years, a certain generously proportioned gentleman was a familiar and welcome presence in my home. His calm - indeed stately - demeanor and genial 'Good evening' always heralded an enjoyable hour's journey into the darkly humourous side of the human condition. His theme music was impressive, ponderous, and quaint - rather like the man himself; his portly shadow slid into place within his sketched profile, like the anticipation of fear itself taking shape and form - a delicious foretaste to the whopping helping of mayhem and murder to come. All in the safety and comfort of my own lounge room.

Keeping in mind that I was between the ages of four and seven years old at the time, this may go some way to explaining my twisted sense of humour in adult life!

"There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating."

In my teens I ravenously devoured horror anthologies, including the wonderful series by Pan Books which featured Hitch on the covers of such twisted titles as 'Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do On TV', 'Stories Not for the Nervous', 'Stories My Mother Never Told Me' and my favourite, 'Stories that Scared Even Me'. I might even have been found on weekends reading 'Rolling Gravestones' sitting on an actual gravestone at the local boneyard. Developmental issues? Who, me?

Yup, I was a Goth before there were Goths!

These books had marvellous covers, each with a portrait of Alfred Hitchcock with his face 'tattooed' with the writhing faces and bodies of the tortured and evil characters inside. I loved them! My copies are all packed away but I found one example to show you here:

"Always make the audience suffer as much as possible."

As I got older, I enjoyed many a great Hitchcock film, my favourite being 'The Birds' which absolutely scared the hell out of me! To this day, I get a little nervous if I see more than four birds flocking together on the power lines!

In more recent years, thanks mainly to SBS and the ABC, I've caught up on his earliest films including 'The Lodger', 'Rich and Strange', 'Number Seventeen', 'Blackmail', 'The 39 Steps', and my favourite of the older films, 'Suspicion'. Even in these early films, you'll see The Master of Suspense appearing in an anonymous cameo role in just about every movie. If you have trouble picking him out, his IMDB filmography has a list of his appearances.

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."

I guess this is borne out by the famous blooper in 'North By Northwest' where the little boy in the restaurant scene covers his ears before a gun is fired! Well, at least we know he attended rehearsal!

Which brings us to the point of this post, which is that my friend Elizabeth and I saw the movie 'Hitchcock' a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed it immensely. It really brought back memories!

Anthony Hopkins was great in the role, but Helen Mirren really stole the show as his long-suffering wife Alma (what a fabulous figure she still has for a 68 year old!) Toni Collette was very watchable as the coolly unflappable secretary, and I was most impressed with the choice of James D'Arcy who was superb as the somewhat damaged and creepy actor Tony Perkins.

The movie is peppered with references for Hitchcock fans: the frequent appearance of birds in pictures and ornaments in his home and office, Hitch's shadowed profile as he eavesdrops on his actresses referencing the initial scene of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', and for those who remain through the end credits (basically, just Elizabeth and me!), a 30 second final shot of Hitchcock walking off stage at the end of the film.

I also enjoyed watching the scenes filmed on location at Paramount as I visited there in 2008 with a group from the sci fi club, Conquest. We walked along the paths and past sound stages shown in the film, saw where Hitchcock's office was, and got 'chased' by the guy at the Bates Motel set who comes after the tour bus with a huge kitchen knife. Lotsa fun? You bet!

"Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints."

I tend not to read too much about a movie that I'm going to see, so I was interested to see the scenes with Ed Gein, the serial killer who inspired the book 'Psycho', which was written by one of my favourite sci fi authors, Robert Bloch.

Gein not only inspired 'Psycho', but is also linked to the character of Buffalo Bill in another of Anthony Hopkins' films, 'Silence of the Lambs'. I really enjoyed how his influence on Hitchcock was brought into the film through the 'fantasy' sequences which had a very filmlike 'stagey' look and feel.

Gein was a very sick individual indeed; one of those cases so unthinkably perverse that the reality truly is 'stranger than fiction'. All the movies which have drawn on his crimes for inspiration have only ever used a small sample of his story. The depiction of the full range of his psychopathy would be (sorry about this!) overkill.

If you have the stomach for it, you can read a bit about Gein here. Don't say I didn't warn you!

So, thinking back, 'Uncle Alfred' has been quite an influence on the moulding of my sense of humour and my lifelong interest in the macabre. You may say he has a lot to answer for! But I can't really complain. After all, what's life without an occasional Hitch?