Midnight Lace (1960)

Filled with Hitchcock alumni - Doris Day from The Man Who Knew Too Much and John Williams from Dial M For Murder, but alongside Rex Harrison, not James Stewart or Cary Grant - and about an American woman (Day), newly married and in London, in distress after she starts being stalked by a disembodied voice - first in a pea soup London fog, atmospherically, and then over a series of phone calls - this thriller directed by David Miller really feels like a classic Hitchcock: London, too, with its double deckers, phone boxes, opera performances, and pubs, and while thriller fans will know where it's heading, there are a few well-handled surprises in the end.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

The similarities between this 1956 Alfred Hitchcock thriller and the director's one in 1934 stop at the title and the fact both movies tell the story of a couple and their child becoming embroiled in a international intrigue, (this time in Marrakesh, Morocco, not Switzerland) so there is no point in comparing the two - viewers should sit back and enjoy this grand, elaborate and largely mindless thriller- a grand bubble of thrilling nothing - beautifully, interestingly filmed in exotic locations with terrific performances from unlikely Hitchcock blonde Doris Day and Hitchcock regular James Stewart as the couple thrust headlong into a long string of elaborate Hitchcock setpieces including the extended scene, unnecessary and entirely indulgent, at the taxidermist's office and the 12-minute dialogue-free Rififi-esque finale.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS