Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here and welcome to a very spooky video. Today we’re looking
at the most questionable episodes of Alfred Hitchcock presents, specifically ones that
bear no resemblance to anything Hitchcockian and come across as unofficial episodes of the
Twilight Zone. I also think these are some of the worst episodes from this series and not
because they have a sci-fi flavor, but because they are just… not good stories. Bafflingly bad.
If you don’t know who Alfred Hitchcock is… that’s weird. You’re weird. But I’ll help
you out, here’s a little montage of the English director’s work.
(clips)
Now that you’re caught up, let’s talk about Alfred Hitchcock Presents, an anthology series that ran
from 1955 to 1965. During that ten year run, Hitchcock himself directed only 18 episodes,
so it’s important to note that this really is just him presenting stories,
thus the title. My first time experiencing this show was when I was a wee lass; I would stay up
far later than my parent’s wishes and watch Nick at Night. I remember being unenthused
with the black and white episodes, the weird and creepy silhouette of Hitchcock himself, while that
famous dirge called Funeral March of a Marionette plays during the credits. As a seven year old,
I was terrified of this show and had to turn it off before it really started. True to its title,
Alfred Hitchcock himself introduces the story in his droll manner, always addressing the audience
with Hitchock: “Good Evening.” He also always concludes the series, either to tie up loose ends
or to offer some dark humor. The series boasts an impressive list of famous guest stars including
Peter Falk, Gloria Swanson, and Bob Newhart. While the series mostly focused on thrillers
and suspense, it definitely has its fair share of outliers, episodes with dialogue so insane you
have to wonder how Hitchcock greenlit these. As I said earlier, there were several science fiction
episodes and the ones I will be talking about were written by acclaimed sci fi author Ray Bradbury.
The first one is called Design for Loving, a bizarre episode with dreadful characters,
a questionable plot, while disguised as a study on marriage and gender politics. Our story
begins with a man named Charles Brailing getting increasingly annoyed with his wife, Lydia. Lydia
is very intrigued by these magician rings and Charles is just fucking over it. He can’t even be
happy for her when she releases one of the rings, he’s just SEETHING over these things. Instead
of asking her to stop, he hops on the phone to call his friend Tom, who can’t come to the phone
right now because he is being kissed into another dimension by his wife. I love that Lydia is now
just comedically throwing the rings around while Charles just looks on with extreme annoyance.
Charlie makes a plea to Lydia, he asks her to go traveling with him,
to go to Paris or Rio so they can have some fun. He grabs Lydia’s hands and she is shocked,
as he basically never touches her. She recalls that once he even kissed her hand;
she says that if he kisses her hand again she’ll go wherever he wants, which is an amazing deal.
I’ll kiss as many hands as you want if that means I get to go to London, line ‘em up!
Charles flat out refuses to kiss her hand. Lydia: “Why does everything have
to be so difficult” Yeah why DOES it? Kiss her hand you utter ghoul.
Unable to do the bare minimum to save his marriage, he retreats to his secret futuristic
basement where looms over a mystery box. Charles: “I gave her a chance.” No you DID NOT.
The next evening, Charles and his smothered buddy Tom get plastered at a bar. Charles
takes him to the side. Charles: “I want to show you something.” Dude not here.
It’s a ticket to Rio. Tom is confused as it’s only for him, and wonders how he will be able
to leave his wife. Charles bets him 50 bucks that he is at dinner, right that very second, with his
wife. Tom’s like heck, I’ll take that bet. They give the money to this racist statue while Charles
waits for Tom to peer through the window. Much to his surprise, there is someone identical to
Charles in the house, playing a game of chess with Lydia. Charles is like, I’ll be taking
THAT. Tom: “I’m drunk.” Hi drunk, I’m Roses.” Tom: “What’s that?” Ooo is it a pixie stick?
Charles blows into a whistle like he’s bloody Captain Von Trapp to summon his clone. Tom is
like, “What is this thing??” Charles: “Put your head close to him.” Weird but okay.
“Listen, listen.” Yes… he is a tugboat.
Charles was so against kissing his wife’s hand that he ordered a robot from a company
aptly named Marionette. Tom: “We duplicate yourself or your friends.” Your FRIENDS? Well
that seems highly unethical. Tom: “Why, I can’t tell you apart.” Huh, he says
that as though someone could go horribly wrong later in the episode. Tom explains
that his wife is smothering him and Charles insists he called Marionette.
Tom goes home and promptly gets some coffee from
the coffee dispenser? That’s just IN the wall? Wow the future is CRAZY
Tom decides to check his savings to see if he has enough to buy a robot, but when he checks
his deposits, he notices 5000 dollars is missing. Which is exactly the cost of one duplicate robot.
No! Anne! You’re a tugboat too??? I don’t buy this at all by the way, how did he NEVER notice the
sound before, especially since his problem was that she was smothering him with affection all
the time. It’s so loud, it sounds like a boiler room in there. As Charles farts around doing god
knows what, his robot is growing fond of Lydia. Charles gets jealous, summons him to the basement,
and chastises him for getting too close. He tries to put him in the box for the night,
and Robot Charles is like, “I don’t like it in there. I want your bed. And your Rio trip. And
your wife. RobotCharles grabs real Charles’s arm and twists it, grabbing the ticket to Rio.
Charles: “Whaddia gonna DO.” I’m sorry, can we hear that line one more time? “Whaddia gonna
DO?” Robot Charles locks human Charles in the box, presumably to let him die. The robot joins
Lydia upstairs and kisses her hand. HE KISSES HER HAND. “You kissed my hand! You kissed my hand!” HE
KISSED YOUR HAND. That means they can go to Rio, what a happy ending.
On to the next episode, called Special Delivery. This actually
might be the worst one in the series, it’s certainly in my least enjoyed list.
It’s about mushrooms. Evil mushrooms.
Little boy Tom is excited when his mom calls him over to collect his mail.
It’s a special delivery from the Great Bayou Novelty Greenhouse. His parents,
Bill and Cynthia, ask what’s in the box, and Tom says they are fast growing jumbo
mushrooms that you can sell for profit. You can grow them right in your basement. Remember
the old days when kids were excited for the simpler things in life, like growing mushrooms?
Tom gets to work right away, preparing his future harvest. The next day Bill is called over by his
neighbor, Roger, who starts asking strange questions and waxing philosophic about wood
shavings. Bill tries to listen but there’s not a single thought in that noggin, just vibes. Roger
makes the bold claim that people are vanishing. Roger: “By the prick of my thumb something wicked
this way comes.” He said the thing! What a reference for the ages! Roger keeps telling
Bill to just keep an eye out, be really observant, and he responds with confusion. “You’ve given
me nothing to go on.” Ah yes, and that will be a recurring sentiment.
The next day Tom already has a wealth of mushrooms. His mom asks if they are for sure
mushrooms and not toadstools, and how are they going to know the difference. Tom: “Eat them, if
you live, they’re mushrooms, if not, you’ll drop dead. HAHAHAHA.” Good lord, kid.
A few minutes later, Bill gets a call from Roger’s wife, who says he has vanished. It’s been a DAY,
how do we know he just didn’t like, hop over to Jewel or something. Roger’s wife says he packed
in five minutes then just left and never came back. Bill has a realization. THE MUSHROOMS,
yes… Roger’s kid is also growing mushrooms. Geez there are SO many.
When he gets back to his place he notices his own son’s exhaustion,
how he TOILS over those mushrooms. Moments later there’s a knock at the door, and it’s a telegram
from Roger. It’s mostly nonsensical gibberish, but ends with “Refuse any special delivery packages.”
We then cut to a scene where Bill is suddenly on the phone with the police, who said they boarded
a train and found Roger on it. They said he was fine, had no recollection of sending a telegram
and is just out on a business trip. Bill isn’t buying it and his wife keeps wondering
why they were warned not to accept any special deliveries. And then she’s like… the MUSHROOMS.
Bill calls Roger’s wife and asks if she had any special deliveries;
she goes on to say that all the boys in the neighborhood are raising them. What is this,
why are all these little boys interested in developing a mushroom business? (Boy laughing)
Bill: “What if Roger was right and
the earth is being invaded by things from other worlds.” Whoa we can just slow down.”
This episode is really just the sentence
“Well that escalated quickly.” Everything happens SO fast without much to go on;
Bill becomes suspicious of the mushrooms but without any evidence he just determines that
they are probably being invaded by aliens. Bill: “Bacteria comes from outer space too, doesn’t it.”
So yeah he just starts monologuing to himself until he decides martians are
using mushrooms to take over Earth. What if Roger really is on a business trip?
Bill insists that the mushrooms are aliens and
they are collecting kids' money for profit then making everyone vanish.
Cynthia: “They haven’t any arms or legs, how can they run a mail order business.” HAHAHAHA,
that is the best line I’ve ever heard.
While getting a snack, Bill finds mushrooms in the fridge. Bill: “Cynthia,
there IS a way for mushrooms to grow arms and legs.” Oh do tell.
Bill says that when people eat the mushrooms they become aliens,
so I guess this is a weird Invasion of the Body snatchers story? It’s just weird because
we still don’t have MUCH proof. He says that it makes sense to establish a greenhouse in
the bayou because of the swampy areas where mushrooms can thrive. Bill does later confirm
his suspicions when he finds his son in the cellar acting weird. Tom: “Don’t put the light on Dad,
it’s bad for the mushrooms.” Tom has clearly eaten the mushrooms and is turning, he put
some in the fridge so that his parents would eat them. Bill: “You didn’t eat any yourself?” Tom:
“Yes. I did.” HAHAHA, gosh how dramatic, yes zoom in on this tiny piece of sliced mushroom.
Using his weird mushroom alien hours he convinces his Dad to eat a mushroom sandwich,
and he presumably also turns into an alien.
So my biggest question is… why? Like, what are the stakes, here? Roger was found on a
train going to New Orelans, I guess where the greenhouse is, are these aliens taking over
human bodies so they can fucking run their mail order mushroom business? (Cynthia)
Are they going to eventually go settle in fuckin Yonkers once the business expands?
I get it, it’s an alien invasion story, maybe I don’t need a reason for their methods. But…no,
I do. I want a reason. Because this seems like one of the less ominous reasons for alien takeover.
Using humans as slaves? Pretty intense. Using them for scientific experiments? Yeah, gnarly.
Using them to expand their weird mushroom business and make money? Yeah I don’t know about that. What
a weird episode. Maybe Ray Bradbury took some bad shrooms before writing this. (Hitchcock end)
Great.
There IS one more episode not written by Ray Bradbury that I would like to discuss in a future
video called The Blessington Method, which should really just be called “Old People Suck,
Let’s Kill Them All.” To quote my friend CJ Tuor,
“It stars the GOAT, Dick York. Dick York, Dick Sargaent, Sargent York.
For now, this concludes my breakdown of two very strange sci fi episodes
of Alfred Hitchcock presents, both written by Ray Bradbury. I hope you enjoyed them,
and I do plan on covering more so if that interests you and you have a suggestion,
please write it in the comments. And as always, stay spooky.
Hey everyone thanks again for watching my video on the Ray Bradbury episodes of Alfred Hitchcock
presents, I hope you enjoyed it or inspired you to look into some of these sci fi entries. If
you want to see more work from me I have plenty to show you but first I want to give a shout out
to my amazing patrons who sponsor this channel and all of its weirdness. I’ve been going through some
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If you want to see more from me, here are a few suggestions. On the right I have a breakdown on a
very strange faith based movie about a talking dog who may or may not be the 13th disciple.
It’s a lot. On the left I have the last episode of my flagship series,
that time on murder, she wrote. Thanks again and as always I will see you in the next one.