Customer Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock: The Legend Begins - 20 Movie Classics

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Since the days of bargain-bin videotapes by labels like Goodtimes, I've always been wary of these "too good to be true" deals. Yet, as I am quite a fan of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, I couldn't pass this one up. And for the most part, I'm glad I gambled a few bucks.

As of this writing, the majority of these films are still in the public domain and thus, not available from companies willing to spend the time and money on a proper restoration. It's worth noting, though, that some of the best films here ARE available in near-pristine condition in the 3-disc The Alfred Hitchcock Box Set (The Ring / The Manxman / Murder! / The Skin Game / Rich and Strange). Two are available in Criterion Collections: The Lady Vanishes - Criterion Collection and The 39 Steps (Criterion Collection Spine #56), while Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn can be found in a cleaned-up version from Image. For those who don't want to shell out the considerable bucks for all those, or if you're a completist (like me) who feels the need to possess EVERY film the man made, this is a good set to own.

Audio/Video quality varies among the films, but I'd consider them all watchable. Since early sound classics like SECRET AGENT and RICH AND STRANGE aren't available in better condition elsewhere, I found the transfers here to be reasonably good. Hitch's best silent film, THE LODGER, unfortunately suffers some serious contrast issues.

The real highlight of this set, however, is nearly an hour's worth of Hitchcock movie trailers. Oddly enough, none of the films contained in the set is represented with a trailer. But they cover much of the Master's career from 1940 thru the late 60's. And the quality on the trailers is far superior to that of the films.

Bottom line: For all but the most discriminating viewer, this is a worthwhile purchase. Just don't expect the quality you'd get from the major companies.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS - THE LEGEND BEGINS consists primarily of silent and sound films that Hitchcock directed before relocating from Britain to Hollywood in 1940. One feature that distingushes this collection from several similar budget-priced multi-packs is the near-hour's worth of movie trailers included as a bonus. There's also a couple of episodes from the murder/mystery anthology TV show that Hitchcock hosted a half century ago.

MILL CREEK box sets offer good-to-average-quality audio and video transfers of public domain material at a most reasonable price. Since their switch over from RAINTREE, the company ID appears for brief intervals in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK - THE MASTERPIECE COLLECTION is an exquisite box set of many of Hitch's finest UNIVERSAL/MCA titles.


Parenthetical numbers preceding titles are 1 to 10 viewer poll ratings found at a film resource website.

(7.0) Blackmail (UK-1929) - Anny Ondra/Charles Paton/Cyril Ritchard
(6.2) Champagne (silent-UK-1928) - Betty Balfour/Gordon Harker/Jean Bradin
(5.8) Easy Virtue (silent-UK-1928) - Isabel Jeans/Franklin Dyall/Ian Hunter
(6.3) The Farmer's Wife (silent-UK-1928) - Jameson Thomas/Lillian Hall-Davis/Gordon Harker
(6.2) Jamaica Inn (UK-1939) - Charles Laughton/Maureen O'Hara/Robert Newton
(4.7) Juno and the Paycock (UK-1930) - Barry Fitzgerald/Maire O'Neill/Edward Chapman
(8.1) The Lady Vanishes (UK-1938) - Margaret Lockwood/Michael Redgrave/Paul Lukas/Dame May Whitty
(7.4) The Lodger (silent-UK-1927) - Marie Ault/Arthur Chesney/Malcolm Keen/Ivor Novello
(6.9) The Man Who Knew Too Much (UK-1934) - Leslie Banks/Edna Best/Peter Lorre
(6.3) The Manxman (silent-UK-1928)- Carl Brisson/Malcolm Keen/Anny Ondra
(5.9) Number Seventeen (UK-1932) - Leon M. Lion/Anne Grey/John Stuart
(6.1) Rich and Strange (UK-1931) - Henry Kendall/Joan Barry/Percy Marmot
(6.2) The Ring (silent-UK-1927) - Carl Brisson/Lillian Hall-Davis/Ian Hunter
(7.2) Sabotage (UK-1936) - Sylvia Sidney/Oskar Homolka/Desmond Tester
(6.7) Secret Agent (UK-1936) - John Gielgud/Peter Lorre/Madeleine Carroll/Robert Young/Lilli Palmer
(5.7) The Skin Game (UK-1931) - C.V. France/Helen Haye/Edmund Gwenn
(8.0) The 39 Steps (UK-1935) - Robert Donat/Madeleine Carroll/Peggy Ashcroft
(7.1) Young and Innocent (UK-1937) - Nova Pilbeam/Derrick De Marney/Percy Marmot

ALSO-- ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS:
(#13) The Cheney Vase (S.1, 12/25/55) - Carolyn Jones Darren McGavin/George Macready/Ruta Lee
(#268) The Sorcerer's Apprentice (S.7, ???) - Diana Dors/Brandon De Wilde/Larry Kert

BONUS: 55 minutes of Hitchcock movie trailers

I picked this up at Wal-Mart in the five-dollar bin, desperate for a copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps and willing to risk all of a five-big-dollars-plus-tax for it. What I got was a terrific collection of the early Hitchcock films, including the silents, not remastered but seemingly all taken from surprisingly decent prints, and with good sound--the quality we used to see and be fine with on late night television. All my discs played perfectly including one I'd scratched accidentally. The discs are packed solid with material so if your DVD player is old or dirty you might have problems.

If I waited for Criterion to do up an equivalent package, and that doesn't seem to be happening, I'd probably end up paying over $200 for the whole shebang. This $5 deal leaves me with $195 to go out and get another DVD player, or even a new lawnmower. Not bad.

Batches of defective discs turn up all the time. It just happens. If a customer, immediately after purchase, swaps a bad disc or set in for a replacement it's likely they'll get another from the same batch. At some point the retailer realizes something is amiss and sends everything back to the distributor. Nobody's selling you defective DVDs because they think it's a swell idea.

Mill Creek Entertainment's address is: Mill Creek Entertainment
2445 Nevada Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55427. I just got this information off the Internet in all of fifteen seconds. They're in Minneapolis so they're probably really nice people and if you get any defective discs from them I'll bet you could give them a call (Toll-Free: (866) 410 9000) and they'd straighten everything out ASAP. I'd recommend this course of action before writing a stinky "review" that isn't even a review, more a customer service issue, and giving a really excellent bargain one or two stars.

It's not that the stories are not interesting. I ordered multiple copies as gifts. All have defective sections. In some cases the film starts and then gets hung up; in other cases the film will not start.
No consistency, just poor quality when they were copied by the manufacturer.

Due to the low price, I did not return them. There are enough other interesting Hitchcock films that can be viewed that make it worthwile to keep them.

However, if you order, be prepared to not view some of the film's that are listed. Seems that some sort of quality control has to be implemented by Amazon to insure that films being ordered are of only the best quality.

For starters, it's great to see Hitchcock's early works. My big gripes about this collection are how the media was handled. The transfers are very poor. I'm not talking about degraded film, which is what it is. I mean the film was obviously transferred on substandard equipment in a hurry. They didn't take care in preserving the contrast of the original films or the framing. It's like they used an old film/video chain with the camera on autoexpose. So when it cuts to something bright, it's overblown until the autoexpose compensates. When it cuts to something dark, like a title card, it's fine until the autoexposure responds making for words that blur together. The framing isn't very good, like words getting chopped off the edge or bottom of the screen etc. At one point, you can see the transfer system stop, rewind, then resume playing for a brief moment in the middle of a movie. The times & synopsis on the cover often have nothing to do with the actual program material. There's also a lot of skips on the DVD. Finally, there's too many movies on each disk making for bad compression artifacts. If they were on such a tight budget, they should have broken the load into 2x 4-disk sets on sold them separately. It was VERY badly handled project done by what I can only assume was an amateur who just didn't care. It's a shame because there's some great early movies here that would have been much more enjoyable if they had been handled properly. I'd be almost tempted to find some of those movies and retransfer them myself with a 35mm projector and a DVX100.

Twenty of the early Hitchcock classics in one boxed set for less than ten bucks. Too good to be true, right? Right. The discs are of such poor quality that they will neither play on my dvd player nor my computer. I have never experienced trouble of any kind on either before. It may seem like a bargain, but please avoid!

good set at a great price.films from late 1920- late 1930's with 2 hitchcock presents episodes from the 1950 and 60'. worth the 5.00 purchase price if only to have all the films in one set.

I thought, "you can't go wrong at this price." Wrong. Several of the films on the DVD would not play. I exchanged it for a 2nd copy and at least 3 of the films were defective on that DVD and they wouldn't play either. I returned it for a refund--and I'm still waiting. A waste of money and time.

Don't buy this box. Discs 1 and 2 are bad, corrupted and wouldn't play in your DVD-player. Buy the two 10-movies boxes instead. They are good. And it is the same films as in the 20-movie box.
I wrote to warranies@amazon.com about the problem but they didn't even answer.

All the discs in this set do not play properly in my DVD player . Some produce no picture or sound , and all cause the player to make noises suggesting it will seize up at any moment . Return policies make it impossible to return this defective product fairly so I am stuck on this one .