Word: hitchcocks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...title of Mr. Hitchcock's collection of stories by twenty-five authors suggests contents too gruesome, off-beat, or sexy for TV screens. The producers and the PTA's, Hitchcock implies, stand in his way. But, although one hates to imply that TV exercises much discrimination or taste, many of the stories could easily have been rejected simply because they were not good...
...Hitchcock calls them all chilling. Several are. But too many remain simply unpleasant, falling far short of anything original and bizarre; too many seem stale or trite rather than shocking or even pleasantly uncomfortable...
However, with the exception of such proven masters of the sharply written, razor-edged tale as John Collier, Roald Dahl, and Saki, few of Hitchcock's authors can both write well and create an intriguing situation or plot. The book's first few selections are rather dull cases in point, and make an unfortunate beginning for an anthology. The editor's idea of arranging authors in reverse alphabetical order is perhaps commendably simple, but hardly functional for anyone who reads more than one story at a time. In this case the arrangement leads to a most uninviting first fifty pages...
Often, of course, Hitchcock realizes this. Occasional implicit grotesqueness along with the horrible images, the examples of practicable black magic, and the demonstrations that crime does pay after all clearly take advantage of what books can do and screens cannot...
Dior and his scissors bear a striking resemblance to Hitchcock and one of his thrillers...