The Trouble with Harry

Hitchcock, 1956, 75m

Perhaps it is unfair to circumscribe Hitchcock as a specialist of horror or suspense since he is always springing surprises and has something altogether new and unexpected cooking for our pleasure even at his worst. First and foremost, he is a teller of stories, using the medium of projecting "a sequence of images on a rectangular screen". This one is pieced around a body (a dead one, of course) which refuses to stay buried and keeps jumping out of it's grave. It belongs to the late un-beloved and lustre-less husband of Shirley MacLaine, and there are many claimants to the guilt of the demise till the matter is amicably resolved, and the unfortunate corpus is prepared for it's final final repose. This is the good natured director at his breezy best. There is even a touch of Wodehouse--he is British, after all. As in Billy Wilder, you can be sure of your penny's worth.