Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime.
A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.
A hapless New York City advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.
Brandon and Philip are two young men who share a New York City apartment. They consider themselves intellectually superior to their friend David Kentley, and as a consequence, decide to murder him. Together they strangle David with a rope and placing the body in an old chest, they proceed to hold a small party. The guests include David's father, his fiancée Janet, and their old schoolteacher Rupert, from whom they mistakenly took their ideas. As Brandon becomes increasingly more daring, Rupert begins to suspect.Written by
Col Needham <col@imdb.com>
The only two characters who never mention David's name are Mrs. Wilson, and, quite surprisingly, Phillip. See more »
Goofs
During the opening credits - and judging by the windows on the opposite side of the street - the camera appears to be positioned roughly at the third, possibly fourth floor height at the most. However, the window view throughout the film suggests a flat on a much higher floor. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Brandon:
[David screams, to Phillip]
Open it.
[they put David in the trunk and close it]
See more »
Crazy Credits
In the end credits, the first credit is for the character of David Kentley who is only seen for a couple of seconds and has no spoken lines. Most of the other characters are listed with a descriptive phrase showing their relationship to David Kentley, or relationship among each other, just above the credit line(s) listing the character name and actor. The description and character name pairings are as follows: His friends - Brandon, Phillip; Their housekeeper - Mrs. Wilson; David's rival - Kenneth; David's girl - Janet; His father - Mr. Kentley; His aunt - Mrs. Atwater. The last character listed, Rubert Cadell, is the only one besides David Kentley without such a descriptive phrase. Also, David Kentley and Rupert Cadell are the only characters listed with both first and last names. See more »
I place this one in my list of films anyone should watch. That is, in order to understand some fundamental issues on film-making and films in the last 50 years.
What i'm least interested in here are the technical innovations. Those represent today a curiosity, a museum fact, worth being remembered and credited to those who worked for them, but just it.
I'm also not so interested in the underlying taboo subjects, namely those regarding the homosexuality issue. In respect to that, i even think the whole film construction, from casting to scene writing threw away many things. I'll get morecontroversial. I think Hitchcock in fact despised those messages (the writers were worried in exploring them, not Hitch), he was not after meanings or controversies, he was after something far more ingenious and influential. I'm talking about his camera eye.
Before this one, all Hitch's work was something between a classical construction and some exploration of the camera as carrier of a character's (and the audience's) emotion/feeling/sensation. The library scene in 'Shadow of a doubt', for example, is the perfect example of what i'm talking about. Anyway, that will Hitch had of making the camera follow around characters, sets, and reveal what a character (or "god") had to reveal was already notable. In here, he made that the theme of the picture. One single set, very few characters, a clear as water story (which he made even clearer by not throwing any doubt about the destiny of the murdered boy). The sexual issues also go to second importance issues. The apartment is at once simple enough to solve the technical difficulties of filming it, and large and divided enough to allow the camera to explore it, searching for elements, for dialogues or for actions. The camera has curiosity, it is almost a character, a character called audience. Years later, in different molds, Hitch would place Stewart behind the camera and definitely assume it as a physical character in the plot (Rear Window). In here what we get is fully a camera that moves to the whishes of the director. The curious, ever searching camera that dePalma would reinvent and Polanski master shows up here.
I believe the work of dePalma, in a way Polanski, Chabrol and even some Godard (Le mépris is filled with this) all derive from what happened here. Hitchcock would probably hit the top with Rear Window, but here is where he becomes an inventor.
My evaluation: 5/5 . one of the cinematic manifestos
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I place this one in my list of films anyone should watch. That is, in order to understand some fundamental issues on film-making and films in the last 50 years.
What i'm least interested in here are the technical innovations. Those represent today a curiosity, a museum fact, worth being remembered and credited to those who worked for them, but just it.
I'm also not so interested in the underlying taboo subjects, namely those regarding the homosexuality issue. In respect to that, i even think the whole film construction, from casting to scene writing threw away many things. I'll get morecontroversial. I think Hitchcock in fact despised those messages (the writers were worried in exploring them, not Hitch), he was not after meanings or controversies, he was after something far more ingenious and influential. I'm talking about his camera eye.
Before this one, all Hitch's work was something between a classical construction and some exploration of the camera as carrier of a character's (and the audience's) emotion/feeling/sensation. The library scene in 'Shadow of a doubt', for example, is the perfect example of what i'm talking about. Anyway, that will Hitch had of making the camera follow around characters, sets, and reveal what a character (or "god") had to reveal was already notable. In here, he made that the theme of the picture. One single set, very few characters, a clear as water story (which he made even clearer by not throwing any doubt about the destiny of the murdered boy). The sexual issues also go to second importance issues. The apartment is at once simple enough to solve the technical difficulties of filming it, and large and divided enough to allow the camera to explore it, searching for elements, for dialogues or for actions. The camera has curiosity, it is almost a character, a character called audience. Years later, in different molds, Hitch would place Stewart behind the camera and definitely assume it as a physical character in the plot (Rear Window). In here what we get is fully a camera that moves to the whishes of the director. The curious, ever searching camera that dePalma would reinvent and Polanski master shows up here.
I believe the work of dePalma, in a way Polanski, Chabrol and even some Godard (Le mépris is filled with this) all derive from what happened here. Hitchcock would probably hit the top with Rear Window, but here is where he becomes an inventor.
My evaluation: 5/5 . one of the cinematic manifestos