Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1958)
Series of unrelated short stories covering elements of crime, horror, drama and comedy about people of different species committing murders, suicides, thefts and other sorts of crime caused by certain motivations; perceived or not.
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Episode 1 - The Hatbox
Release Date: 10 Oct. 1961Several college students try to make the police believe that a professor has murdered his missing wife.
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Episode 2 - Bang! You're Dead
Release Date: 17 Oct. 1961A 5-year-old boy finds his uncle's revolver, partially loads it with bullets, and plays it with in public, unaware of its deadly power.
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Episode 3 - Maria
Release Date: 24 Oct. 1961While drunk, Leo Thorby buys what he thinks is a chimp. His wife Carol is outraged when she finds out he spent $500 and wants him to get his money back. Both of them are shocked to find out that the chimp is actually a woman, Maria, in a monkey suit and Leo thinks he has found the perfect circus act. Maria can sketch but only paints what she sees and when Leo sees a sketch of his wife kissing the lion tamer, he immediately jumps to conclusions. Little does he realize it's all part of Maria's plan to get rid of Carol. When he gets of Maria, she plots her own revenge.
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Episode 4 - Cop for a Day
Release Date: 31 Oct. 1961When a young woman witnesses two men rob and kill a bank messenger, one of the men devises a plan to silence her.
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Episode 5 - Keep Me Company
Release Date: 7 Nov. 1961Julia Reddy is a newlywed who spends most of her evenings at home alone, watching TV and playing solitaire. Her husband Marco is out working almost every evening with his two brothers. He's apologetic but he and his brothers are setting up a new wholesale business and they have to put in the hours. Alone one evening, she's afraid someone may be out on her fire escape and phones the police who check the situation and assure everything is okay. She rather liked having someone to chat to so she phones the police again asking that a more senior officer be sent to deal ...
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Episode 6 - Beta Delta Gamma
Release Date: 14 Nov. 1961A college fraternity drugs and makes up one of their members to look as if he is dead, then lead another unsuspecting member into believing he killed him.
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Episode 7 - You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life
Release Date: 21 Nov. 1961A woman beaten by an unknown attacker, comes under great pressure by her husband and the police to identify a suspect.
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Episode 8 - The Old Pro
Release Date: 28 Nov. 1961A retired hit man being blackmailed finds out in his profession, he has to keep on killing to protect his wife and to survive.
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Episode 9 - I Spy
Release Date: 5 Dec. 1961Mrs Morgan has left her husband and has taken a position as a waitress at an English seaside hotel. Captain Morgan's lawyer has hired a private detective to go and determine exactly what she is up to and see whether there are grounds for divorce. Mr. Frute, the detective, has taken a job at the same hotel and becomes quite friendly with Mrs. Morgan who tells him that she left her husband because of his extreme jealousy and not for another man. They become quite friendly, with not unexpected results.
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Episode 10 - Services Rendered
Release Date: 12 Dec. 1961A young man has a minor accident walking down the street and a street person cons him into buying them a drink. It's only when they go to introduce themselves that the young man realizes he has no idea who he is and has suffered a complete loss of memory. In his pocket he finds a $1000 bill and the name and address for a Dr. Ralph Mannick. Mannick has no idea who he is but while at his office, the young man recalls who he is and why he had the doctor's name and a $1000.
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Episode 11 - The Right Kind of Medicine
Release Date: 19 Dec. 1961Charlie Marx shoots a police officer while fleeing from a robbery and is himself shot in the ankle. There is a witness to the shooting and police will spare no effort to track down a cop killer. Marx gets medical attention from a doctor and fills a prescription at his local drugstore for painkillers but not without harassing the the harried druggist. It turns out that Marx should have let the pharmacist take his time.
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Episode 12 - A Jury of Her Peers
Release Date: 26 Dec. 1961Jim Hale stops in to see the Wrights and ask if they would like to share a party line telephone. He finds that Millie Wright is acting strangely and her husband strangled in their bed. Millie claims she found her husband like that when she came in from feeding the chickens but the local district attorney is convinced she killed her husband. Sarah Hale is quite sympathetic and feels sorry for Millie who lived a hard, lonely life with a less than ideal husband and takes steps to do something about it.
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Episode 13 - The Silk Petticoat
Release Date: 2 Jan. 1962In 1817 London, a silk petticoat belonging to the first wife of a newly remarried husband, reveals him to be a very evil man.
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Episode 14 - Bad Actor
Release Date: 9 Jan. 1962Bart Collins is a frustrated actor who hasn't had much success in landing roles lately. He's in line for a part in a play but Bart parties hard and shows up late for his audition. He finds he's in competition with another actor, Jerry Lane and in a rage, strangles Jerry in his apartment. Before he can dispose of the body he is visited by a detective looking into Jerry's disappearance. Bart's odd behavior however, gives him away.
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Episode 15 - The Door Without a Key
Release Date: 16 Jan. 1962A man walks into a police station with no memory of who he is. He is soon followed by young Mickey Hollins, who was inadvertently left behind by his father at a gas station. Through talking to the boy and the police officer, the man gradually remembers bits and pieces of memory, until he finally remembers who he is and why he's in his current predicament. Similarly, the boy also reveals the truth about himself.
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Episode 16 - The Case of M.J.H.
Release Date: 23 Jan. 1962Jimmy French is a ne'er-do-well who happens to meet the shy but attractive Maude Sheridan in a diner. Maude tells him she is a secretary to Dr. Cooper, a well-known psychotherapist, and he manages to track her down and ask her out on a date. They begin seeing each other regularly and she is obviously attracted to him but one evening he drops a bomb on her: he can't keep a regular job and is heavily in debt. His solution is for Maude to lend him some of her employer's confidential files so he can find a suitable patient to blackmail. At first she refuses to help him, ...
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Episode 17 - The Faith of Aaron Menefee
Release Date: 30 Jan. 1962Garage mechanic Aaron Menafee suffers from an ulcer but is apparently cured by a faith healer, the Rev. Otis "Healer" Jones. Jones asks Aaron if he would be his chauffeur and out of gratitude, he accepts even though he has to return half his salary as a faith offering. Problems arise for Aaron when he becomes attracted to Rev. Jones' daughter Emily, who is constantly teasing and flirting with him. When they decide to get married, Jones does not approve and the young couple decide to stay true to one another. When Aaron returns to his hometown, he's confronted by a ...
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Episode 18 - The Woman Who Wanted to Live
Release Date: 6 Feb. 1962When a woman is forced by a murderer to drive him to safety, she deliberately passes up chances to escape.
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Episode 19 - Strange Miracle
Release Date: 13 Feb. 1962A man dares to try and fake a miracle, after pretending to be paralyzed to get insurance money.
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Episode 20 - The Test
Release Date: 20 Feb. 1962Vernon Wedge is a hot shot lawyer who agrees to defend 17-year old Benjy Marino who is accused of murder. Benjy swears he's innocent but Wedge isn't buying it and feels he should plead guilty. He nonetheless decides to defend him and at the trial tries a chemical test to determine if blood is present on the knife, but the DA objects and Wedge uses the refusal to undertake the test to get Benjy off. But would the test have revealed?
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Episode 21 - Burglar Proof
Release Date: 27 Feb. 1962A paroled safe cracker is hired by a safe company to try and break open one of their safes publicly, and get the 50,000 dollar reward inside.
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Episode 22 - The Big Score
Release Date: 6 Mar. 1962While Dora's babysitting, her boyfriend and two of his pals show up. They clearly intend to rob the house but are caught in the act when the owner returns home unexpectedly. They steal a large sum of money but one of the young hoods, Gino, stabs the owner and Dora offers to call the police with a good story. Gino agrees but is worried that they not give themselves away but soon realizes that one of his gang has already fenced a lighter stolen from the house. Turns out the homeowner had a reason for having a large sum of money on hand.
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Episode 23 - Profit-Sharing Plan
Release Date: 13 Mar. 1962It's Miles Cheever's last day at work as he is retiring after 20 years of service. His boss and colleagues throw a little farewell party for him at the office and give him his going away present, a plain pen and pencil set. At home with his wife, they review his plans to empty the vault at work, which he manages to do without difficulty. It seems Cheever is leading a double life however and plans on running off with his girlfriend. When their airplane is delayed because of a bomb threat, they face the risk of being discovered.
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Episode 24 - Apex
Release Date: 20 Mar. 1962Claude is a successful business executive whose wife, Clara, owns the company he heads. He is also having a affair with his attractive neighbour, Margo. Claude's wife suspects her husband of having an affair and has made it quite clear that he would get nothing in a divorce settlement. Claude had every intention of killing his wife but when it comes time, he simply can't do it and suggests they hire a hit man to do the deed. Margo decides to take charge of the situation, however. Unfortunately, they find themselves working at cross purposes with not unexpected results.
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Episode 25 - The Last Remains
Release Date: 27 Mar. 1962Amos Duff is a mortician whose business if failing. The bills are piling up and Amos laments the fact that he has never sold his top of the line class A funeral. He does finally get a client when Marvin Foley makes arrangements for his business partner's funeral. Supposedly, the partner was killed in a car accident but Amos discovers a bullet wound. Foley agrees to buy the class A funeral provided Amos cremates the body but after several months has yet to settle his final account for the funeral. With the body cremated Foley refuses to pay but Amos reports the case to...
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Episode 26 - Ten O'Clock Tiger
Release Date: 3 Apr. 1962A boxing manager risks his fighter's health by increasing the dosage of a secret energy formula he has been injecting him with.
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Episode 27 - Act of Faith
Release Date: 10 Apr. 1962Ralston Temple is a successful novelist who receives a letter from struggling writer Alan Chatterton asking him for comments on the first three chapters of his book. Temple invites him to his apartment and Chatterton asks him for a loan of $40 per week for six months to allow him to finish his novel. Over time, the loans grow larger and Temple has yet to see anything of the novel. At a restaurant one evening, Temple sees Chatterton entertaining a group of friends and learns that he is a regular patron. Thinking he has been swindled, Temple throws him out. Only later ...
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Episode 28 - The Kerry Blue
Release Date: 17 Apr. 1962A man suspects that his wife buried his collapsed kerry-blue species dog alive, and now he wants to kill her.
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Episode 29 - The Matched Pearl
Release Date: 24 Apr. 1962Laurent Dubois is a jeweler who manages to sell a magnificent black pearl for $5000. Turns out the buyer's wife doesn't know what to do with only one pearl and insists that they find another. Dubois returns to the pearl's original owner, Captain McCabe, to see if he can find another. McCabe feels that he was cheated on the first deal and he refuses Dubois' offer to double the original price if he can find a second pearl. Dubois eventually gets the pearl and a bit of a surprise as well.
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Episode 30 - What Frightened You, Fred?
Release Date: 1 May 1962Fred Riordan is an ex-con who is re-arrested less than 48 hours after his release on parole. He served four years for robbery and on his release, seems like a mild mannered man who is intent on making a go of it. He recounts to the warden and prison psychiatrist the events during his two days of freedom as they try to determine what may have caused him to get drunk and break up a bar in his old neighborhood. The psychiatrist is convinced that something in the outside world frightened him and probes to determine exactly what that was. Little do they know that there is ...
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Episode 31 - Most Likely to Succeed
Release Date: 8 May 1962Dave Sumner drops in on his old college friend Stanley Towers, whom he hasn't seen for 20 years. Dave has fallen on hard times and actually never amounted to much, even though he was president of his class and had been voted 'most likely to succeed'. Towers on the other hand made his first million by age 32 and is very well off. As a favor, Towers offers Dave a job doing different tasks around the house, serving drinks at parties and so on. Mrs. Towers is also unhappy and confides in Dave that her husband is a workaholic and is involved in unethical deals like ...
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Episode 32 - Victim Four
Release Date: 15 May 1962A man searches for his brain injured wife who has to walk home from work nightly, in the midst of a serial killer.
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Episode 33 - The Opportunity
Release Date: 22 May 1962Paul Devore is an unhappily married department store manager who hatches a scheme to avoid sharing any community property with his wife, who loathes him. He blackmails a thirty-something shoplifter into coming to his house the following Sunday evening. Assuming he was going to force her to have sex, she is surprised to find the master bedroom ransacked and all of the valuables missing. She realizes Devore has staged a robbery and all he wants the shoplifter to do is tie him to the bed to make it look like a robbery. But what will Mrs. Devore say when she gets home and...
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Episode 34 - The Twelve Hour Caper
Release Date: 29 May 1962Herbert Wiggam has been the assistant cashier at his securities trading firm for 11 years. He has always been a loyal employee but things may be changing. He's advised by his boss that he will not be getting the head cashier position as that will going to another employee, who just happens to be his wife's favorite nephew. Wiggam goes ahead with an elaborate plan to steal $500,000 in bearer bonds that are scheduled for delivery late on a Friday afternoon. He's planned everything down to the minute - but has he forgotten one important factor?
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Episode 35 - The Children of Alda Nuova
Release Date: 5 Jun. 1962Frankie Fane is an American who has been in Rome for about six weeks and is starting to get bored. He hasn't picked up much of the language and has visited most of the tourist sites in Rome itself. A fellow Amrecian suggests that he rent a car and visit some old ruins just a short drive from the city. When he gets there he finds the villagers unfriendly and a large group of teenagers that constantly follow him around. He quickly realizes that he may be in trouble, but it may also be the case that he gets what he deserves.
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Episode 36 - First Class Honeymoon
Release Date: 12 Jun. 1962Edward Gibson is newly divorced and a very happy man. He's less happy when he learns that his ex-wife Gloria commissioned a portrait of herself for $2500. He refuses to pay and asks his friend Carl, who's now seeing his ex-wife, to buy the painting. Carl has something else in mind: he offers to marry Gloria, for a price, thus saving his friend alimony payments. Edward accepts his friend's offer and gives him $5000. Only problem is that Carl has a somewhat different plan in mind.
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Episode 37 - The Big Kick
Release Date: 19 Jun. 1962Ken is a square university professor who likes hanging around with a group of beatniks. At a party he meets Judy who is down and out and can't buy food, let alone pay the rent. Urged on by her boyfriend Mitch, Judy agrees to go out on a date with Ken in the hopes of getting some money out of him. When the professor gives her an expensive bracelet, Mitch tries to hawk it with interesting results. Ken is obviously one step ahead of them and little do they realize what is in store.
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Episode 38 - Where Beauty Lies
Release Date: 26 Jun. 1962Caroline Hardy lives with her handsome brother Collin. She is in her 30's, is unmarried and thinks of herself as ugly and unattractive. She thinks the world of Collin, a well-known stage actor and keeps house for him. She sees them drifting apart however, particularly as Collin seems ever closer to his girlfriend Joan. Caroline hatches a plot to ensure that Collin will forever be dependent on her and will shun all outside contact.
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Episode 39 - The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Release Date: 1962A magician takes a simple-minded runaway under his wing. But the magician's wife has a sinister idea for the manipulable young man.