A Tribute to Alfred Hitchcock

Page Three - More Favorite Hitchcock Films

"North by Northwest" (1959)
Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason star in this entertaining, lighthearted thriller. Advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Grant) is wrongly accused of murder and becomes an innocent man on the run, along the way becoming romantically involved with an icy blonde (Saint). Thornhill and the blonde have to try to prevent the diabolical Philip Vandamm (Mason) from getting government secrets on microfilm (the MacGuffin) out of the country. My favorite scene is where Thornhill is at a crossroads surrounded by cornfields in the middle of nowhere when he is suddenly chased by a low-flying airplane.

"Psycho" (1960)
"Psycho" is the Hitchcock movie that has had the biggest impact on the general public, and it is a very good film, although I think both "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" are much better. Anthony Perkins is superb as Norman Bates, the creepy guy who runs the out-of-the-way Bates Motel ("12 rooms, 12 vacancies"), and Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a woman on the lam who is stabbed to death in the shower there in one of the most memorable scenes in movie history. When a private detective (Martin Balsam) goes out to investigate Marion’s disappearance, he becomes the next murder victim. Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia appears as Marion’s coworker. My favorite line is when Norman Bates says, "A boy’s best friend is his mother."

"The Birds" (1963)
"The Birds" starts out like a romantic comedy when icy blonde Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) meets ruggedly handsome Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a San Francisco pet shop. Then Melanie buys a pair of lovebirds as a gift for Mitch’s 11-year-old sister and drives up to a picturesque northern California seaside town to deliver them, and there the movie turns into a horror film. In sequence, a lone seagull attacks Melanie, a flock of seagulls assaults kids at a birthday party, a flock of aggressive sparrows emerges from the fireplace at Mitch’s mother’s house, and a human corpse turns up with its eyes pecked out. My favorite scene comes at the end where the defeated Mitch drives away with the seriously injured Melanie while countless numbers of roosting birds look on triumphantly.

Of course, there are other interesting Hitchcock films not on the above list, and here are ten more I like: "The Lady Vanishes" (1937), "Suspicion" (1941), "Lifeboat" (1944), "Spellbound" (1945), "Stage Fright" (1950), "Dial M for Murder" (1954), "To Catch a Thief" (1955), "The Wrong Man" (1956), "Marnie" (1964), and "Frenzy" (1972).

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