User Reviews

"The Hidden Thing" is a rarity for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" reviews....most of them are negative or very negative. Is it as bad as they say?

When the show begins, you see a young man and his fiance. They are in love and looking forward to a life together. But when they stop for a bite to eat, some maniac runs over and kills the lady...leaving her fiance an emotional wreck...which is no surprise. Soon after, a man arrives at his house...telling him he can help him relive the day of the accident and help him to remember the license plate number of the vehicle.

While I didn't hate this episode....I sure didn't like it! And, the twist at the end, I agree, isn't great. A poorly written episode, as it had a great set-up but the twist at the end just didn't satisfy.

This is an interesting episode at first, but it starts to fizzle. I actually had a better ending where the man is actually the killer of the older man's son. They chose to use their own ending, so I guess there's not much of a chance of their changing the ending. This is about a fellow who is in love with a woman. One night, as they stop for a hamburger, she goes back to the car and is struck and killed by a hit and run driver. This causes great pain to the fellow. One day, an older man shows up and asks to help him raise memories from his subconscious through a kind of hypnotism. He is incredibly persistent. They are trying to dredge up the license plate number of the offending vehicle. Something is wrong because a law officer sits in wait. I know that this show is frustrating for some people because we often have to provide our own conclusions. Nevertheless, I believe this episode is quite weak because motivations and actions are not explained. Without motivations, action becomes random. With randomness, the viewer is left in the dark. This could have been quite good.

Disappointing episode with a lame payoff. Nice guy Dana (McGuire) is cuddling with sweetie Laura (Ames) in front seat of car, when they decide to cross highway on foot to get some food. Trouble is Laura leaves Dana in front of diner to re-cross highway to get her purse. On way back she's struck and killed by hit-and-run driver. Dana's distraught and unable to give police a description of the car or its license plate. He blames himself for not fetching her purse, and is thus guilt-ridden. Then a strange little man (Harris) shows up claiming he can get the hapless Dana to recall what the police need. Just who is this Hurley.

So far, so good. There's some suspense concerning the stranger and where the episode is going. However, the payoff lacks usual Hitch imagination or even irony. And I was left wondering if that was all there is. Plus, catch Harris's coy gesture at the end that almost amounts to a wink at the audience. Clearly, the series customarily did a lot better.

A man finds himself trapped in his mind, unable to break through an important memory which will make it possible for the police to catch the person who killed the woman he loves. A strange man keeps calling and finally comes over to say he can help this poor man remember an important number.

The ending, which will go unspoken here to avoid spoiling it, is the reason why the two previous posters did not like this episode. I for one loved the ending. Sure, there were many other choices and reasons for what the man had done, but since the viewers can easily remember the license plate, through the art of the cameraman, it is a wonderfully ironic ending which is so much less obvious than any other could be and makes you shake your head at bullet headed authority. One has to wonder what will happen next to this poor guy and his Svengali and the cops. The acting is wonderful by two Hitchcock regulars

"The Hidden Thing" did have potential to be good. Robert Stevens was the most prolific director of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' and was responsible for some truly fine episodes, including in Season 1. This is not the first appearances on the series for Biff McGuire and Robert H. Harris, they were in previous episodes and both were watchable. The idea for the story was intriguing even if not original. While the series had its weak points, when it hit particularly high it was brilliant.

Brilliant "The Hidden Thing" turned out not to be by any stretch of the imagination. Really did want to go against the grain, considering its potential, and say that it is not as bad as others are saying, but to me it is that bad. It is a strong contender for the worst episode of Season 1, and none of the things the episode was seen for come off well. Considering the potential, "The Hidden Thing" really should have been so much better and everybody involved deserved much better than this. And no, this actually is not a case of one aspect completely ruining things.

It is not a complete disaster. Harris has enough pretty good moments and gives the only halfway decent performance of the episode, the reaction to being called a nut is indeed priceless. Hitchcock's bookending always entertain, and it is amusingly written and nicely staged here.

Also thought that the episode doesn't look too bad, though there are better looking episodes of the series, and the main theme for the series is deservedly iconic.

Unfortunately, that is it when it comes to the praise for "The Hidden Thing". Am another person that thought that the acting was not good, especially at the beginning. McGuire does not look at ease here and there are no fireworks in the chemistry throughout. Stevens' direction is uninvolving and lifeless, had a hard time believing that it was Stevens directing. The dialogue tends to be clunky.

Story-wise, "The Hidden Thing" is pretty much a mess. It is thin, while also trying to rush through the second half, and lacks any kind of suspense. Also found it pretty silly too when it increasingly lost credibility later. The characters are mere ciphers with motivations that are vague at best and not delved to anywhere near enough, so actions made no sense and made the characters look stupid. The worst thing about the episode is the ending, while not single-handedly ruining it it brings it down considerably. Calling it a head-scratcher is being far too kind.

Overall, weak. 3/10.

As with most other reviewers, I was disappointed with this episode because of the limp, head-scratching finale. I didn't detect overtly bad-acting per se, as others did, but accepted the 2 principals at face-value. Always interesting as to how, in scenes where a person's hit by a speeding-car, there's not a drop of blood to be seen anywhere on the pavement. I don't mind that, though, as it's simply too gruesome a thing to contemplate, especially coming into people's homes back in the mid-50's, with pretty-strict network-standards. As usual, I found Robert Harris compelling but obviously-strange. When he kept insisting on helping Dana recover his memory, to the point of harassment, I'm surprised that Dana or his mother didn't call the authorities, which they never did. It seems the police, even back in the 50's, would've had Dana see a professional psychologist, to help restore the guilt-ridden guy's memory. I also find it unfair of characters, in such stories as this, to insist that someone like Dana "snap out of it", "pull himself together", "it's been a full-week now since the accident. You should be getting-over your depression & guilt", and such as that. Noone in real-life can bounce-back that quickly when dealing with a traumatic-experience. Harris' character, Hurley, the aggressive "memory-helper", is never investigated. Dana & his mom just accept his vague, non-explanations. At the very least, I thought perhaps Hurley was just trying to "force" Dana into recalling the hit & run driver's license-plate no., possibly, in fact, he, Hurley, WAS a psychologist, maybe one even provided by the police---the point being that, if Dana knew or suspected this, he might really have frozen-up & refused to remember. Since Hurley's techniques worked in the long-run, it seems the police should've been jumping-for-joy, not simply dismissing the odd-man as a well-known kook. Overall, I found this episode compelling until the last 30-seconds or so. Amazingly, the more I watched Robert Harris, the more I realized how much he resembled the famous 19th-century French-author Gustave Flaubert, who wrote "Madame Bovary". Do a comparison. As I said, amazing!

This is a pretty lame episode. I just don't get the ending. I also had a much better ending in my mind--I was thinking the whole time how shocking it would have been to find out the license plate number was the mother's. But instead we are just left confused and wondering why I even bothered to watch this episode in the first place. Quite a let down, which is very rare for an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode.

It's almost the same feeling you get when writing out a comment on an episode at the IMDb and finding out it won't let you because it's too short and you have to add a few more lines to reach the minimum 10 lines. If it doesn't work this time I'll have to go back and add some more adjectives that are synonyms for lame: which describes this Alfred Hitchcock episode and also the IMDb commenting rules.

I'm watching all of the episodes right now and have just seen this one. It is by far the weakest episode. The twist at the end just fails and it feels like the writers really didn't know where they were going with it. A very bad ending to a bad episode.

Another interesting story by James Cavanagh, who wrote quite a few tales for Hitch. To his credit, he was producer for Boris Karloff's tv show, THRILLER. With Hitch and Karloff backing you, you couldn't go wrong.

Also, one of Hitch's popular bad guys, Robert H. Harris co-stars, and steals a few scenes while he's at it.

Harris was a master of makeup and voice. Occasionally, he would don a wig and become more of an authoratative figure, or change his voice. He does the latter here, with a commanding, deep voice, playing a mind specialist(?), who tries to get to the bottom of a hit and run.

Big guy Biff McGuire plays a man whose future bride is killed by a reckless driver. He also blames himself for not watching over her. Enter mysterious Harris, who attempts --via "total recall" -- to retrieve from his memory the license plate of the car. Not a bad idea. At least to keep you watching.

Harris is the whole show, albeit a bit over the top, but he makes his case. And there is some truth to the proceedings as "total recall" has been used in a multitude of psychological and court cases. That said, I did subtract one star -- because the ending could have been more bizarre a la Hitch, but it still doesn't take away from a very interesting, if not emotional story.

You be the judge, but if you are a Hitchcock fan, you will never be totally disappointed. And what do ya want for a half hour black and white tv show? SEASON 1 remastered Universal box set.

Main story is OK, but not great. Dude and his honey in front seat of car on side of road. Burger joint across the street, she wants to park car in front of burger joint, he teases her about being too lazy too cross the road. They run across the street. Before they go in she decides she needs her compact from the car. On the way she gets hit by a hit and run driver. Enter strange man who offers to help him remember plate # of driver. Technique works and then its the BAD ending.

It's amazing how people can watch the same thing and have such differing opinions.

I realize that something like this is subjective but I would think that some aspects of this episode would be seen in the same way by a vast majority of viewers. For example: Is terrible acting really that subjective? This series features some great stories by outstanding writers, and also some terrific actors. Yet, it still manages to produce a large number of very weak episodes and terrible acting. The acting in the opening minutes of this episode is so bad that it's hard to not just stop watching right then and there. I actually thought the bad acting was intentional and came up with a reason why they might be doing it that related to the story. But no, it's just bad acting. Yet one of the reviews here suggests the acting is great! In addition to the bad acting, the directing seems very poor. I kept thinking that if I was directing this I would have constantly been yelling: "Cut! Are you kidding me?", but this director obviously saw no problems with some of the absurdity taking place.

As others have suggested, the ending is NOT good. (Except for that one strange review that thought the ending and the acting were great!) I would suggest to anyone thinking of watching this episode that they watch the beginning and see what they think. If you think, as I did, that it in unbelievably bad, then you might not want to waste your time, because it doesn't get much better.