The New "Murder on the Orient Express" (BIG SPOILERS for 1974 and 2017 Versions)

Rope does have its charms. For me, John Dall sells the gay thrillkill aspect of the story,--is there a way saying this more "tastefully"?--while Farley Granger is like his mopey partner.

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I've read of these "dyad" killing buddy-pairs, and evidently one is always the more dominant one, and the more legitmate psychopath. I know this was the case with the young Columbine killers and I think that was the case with Leopold and Loeb. Dall is the "force" in this killer team -- fairly close to Bruno Anthony in his fey way, but more of a "superior being" type. It remains interesting that Farley Granger went from playing a gay Hitchcock villain to a straight Hitchcock hero within three years.

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He was a downer in this one. Dall matched Jimmy Stewart's character in his mental energy and alertness.

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Yes, I think it was written so that Dall was actually the "lead villain" and Granger almost his sidekick. Except: mopey Granger was actually the killing machine and HE's the one looking to kill Stewart sooner rather than later at the end. Interesting, I thought.

Slight personal downside: Some of Dall's vocal and physical mannerisms in Rope remind me of Dan Ackroyd in his snooty "Trading Places" persona. But then some people feel that Robert Walker in Strangers gives off a "Bill Murray vibe." We work from who we know NOW.

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Hitchcock made the best of a bad situation; and yet there's a pattern of this in his filmography, as Hitchcock liked to test the limits of what was possible in films back in the day.

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Though Hitchcock ended up under fire for too many likely gay villains -- the Rope pair, Bruno, Leonard in NXNW, likely Mrs. Danvers and possibly(the actor more than the role) Norman Bates -- I think that, yes, he was always trying to push that envelope and gay characters were banned. This even as Hitchcock worked among gays in the Hollywood community all the time, and certainly hired them for acting and writing and other tasks.

And I've always liked to push the envelope a bit and suggest that some of his women-hating HEROES(James Stewart in Rear Window, Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief) might have had some preferences that neither they nor we saw "overtly." These men settled down with women in the end(the same woman on those occasions) but, again -- with a certain antipathy. And I know "women-hating" is too strong a term; perhaps bored and put off by, would be better.

Meanwhile, it wasn't just gays that Hitchcock pushed the envelope on. Its as if he perused the Hays Code and kept going after it: pre-marital sex; extra-marital sex; too-violent violence(the killings in Lifeboat, Spellbound and Rope, long before Psycho.) Nudity(in Psycho.) The villain getting away with it(Saboteur, Vertigo.) The cheating wife getting to keep her lover(Dial M.) And more that I've forgotten.

Then there are those real life cases that could almost BE Hitchcock projects: the Boston Strangler comes to mind

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The film of The Boston Strangler came out right before the R rating came in, as I recall, or perhaps had one of the first ones. I wasn't allowed to see it. I did get to see Frenzy(which could have been called The London Strangler) a few years later, probably because of Hitchcock's cachet.

Funny thing: the central rape-murder in Frenzy was more graphic than any of the truncated scenes of such in The Boston Strangler. Perhaps fictionalizing the crime made it less sensationalistic and insulting to real victims' real families.

The Boston Strangler famously gave Tony Curtis a late-breaking chance to prove his considerable chops as an actor -- with a putty nose and a draining-out of any sex appeal. The final interview scenes that got into his reasons for sex killing -- and had him "mime" an actual killing in a chilling moment -- were MORE than anything Psycho or Frenzy gave us.

I don't feel that it was a particularly classic movie, though. It had the "clunky" feeling of many late sixties movies that were more of the old era than the new. The first R rated movies often were made by people who didn't know what to do with the rating.

The low budget 1964 exploitation thriller The Strangler was apparently, despite its being set in L.A., "inspired" by the still open Boston Stranger case of the period. Victor Buono as the fat mama's boy killer was inspired casting, though not IMHO right for what have had to have been a more rugged type to have pulled off all those murders.

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A more rugged type like the very fit Tony Curtis(who surprisingly, COULD play rugged.)

Its been noted that had he been "discovered" back in 1960, Victor Buono would have been a perfect fit for a movie version of the Norman Bates of Robert Bloch's novel. But I doubt Hitchcock would have used him -- the part needed an identifiable marquee star. And Hitchcock liked his leads -- hero OR villain -- to be trim and good looking.

Still, Buono is worth thinking about as Bloch's Bates on screen. He seems a bit too cultured and "Shakespearean" an actor for the rural backwater schlub that Bloch's Norman was -- even as Bloch's Norman was very well read and deep into the occult. But it is hard to think of too many bankable overweight male stars in Hollywood at anytime. Discussions of Bloch's Bates on screen have often centered on 1960 Rod Steiger as a good choice -- he played a Mother-dominated Mr. Joyboy in The Loved One in 1965. But that's about it.

(O.J.'s a maybe, as I think it would work better as a Hitch project without the race angle that there's no getting away from where the actual case is concerned).

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. JonBenet comes to mind, but I feel that the case is too damn heartbreaking to ponder as something that could be fashioned as a mainstream movie. The very idea of someone, anyone, making money off the case turns me off.

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Me, too. Your two examples remind us that, as far as real life cases go, real life often summons up elements that Hitchcock -- as an "entertainer"(less Frenzy) -- did not want to confront. The racial aspects of OJ on the one hand; the "sexualization of a child"(in the pageants) of Jon Benet.

There is also the issue that OJ swore he never did it and "got off"(the criminal trial) and now lives in freedom; and that they never really have proved who killed Jon Benet. These are frustrating elements to any crime story. At least in Psycho and Frenzy, we KNOW whodunnit, and we watch them captured(if not killed.)

I do believe that I saw The Boston Strangler on a list of projects that Hitchcock turned down over his career. He remarked on the film "In Cold Blood" that if he had made it, he would have spent more time meeting the Clutter Family members who are so ruthlessly killed (which is rather his strategy in Psycho -- we KNOW Marion Crane.)

In short, it seems to me that for Hitchcock to tackle "true crime" related tales -- he had to have done them once they had been massaged into very fictionalized and plotty "new versions": Rope, Psycho, Frenzy -- and Rear Window -- bear little resemblance to the true crimes that inspired them.

Note in passing: to help Barry Foster prepare for the role of Bob Rusk, Hitchcock lent the actor a small collection of books about serial killers like Neville Heath and John Christie. Creepy homework. Creepy to think that Hitchcock owned those books.

From the same period there's an underground cult classic, Who Killed Teddy Bear, in which Sal Mineo played a psycho killer (and very well) that was as creepy as Psycho if not nearly so good. It has its fans. Alas, I've seen it just once. There may be a Boston Strangler connection to this otherwise very New York (and New York filmed) movie. Mineo was a first rate actor, and I suppose this was "his" Norman Bates part. It's too bad the movie, which is very good, isn't better.

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Here's an ecarle "context jump":

Sal Mineo was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1960, the year that Martin Balsam WASN'T (for Arbogast.)

Chill Wills was in that race(for The Alamo) and ran some egregious ads asking all his "cousins" to vote for him.

Groucho Marx took this ad in Variety:

"Dear Chill Wills. Very pleased to be your cousin. However, I am voting for Sal Mineo. Sincerely, Groucho Marx."

But, I digress(and oh, Peter Ustinov won, for Spartacus.)

I have heard of, but not seen "Who Killed Teddy Bear?"(which duplicated the titles of every Burke's Law episode: "Who Killed BLANK?") I think I confused it FOR a Burke's Law episode. Now I am interested in seeing it.

It occurs to me that Sal Mineo could have been on the short list to play Norman Bates. He was a bit "ethnic" for the character, but had that boyish shy thing going on.

And of course, Sal Mineo met an untimely Psycho-ish death -- stabbed to death in West Hollywood. Peter Bogdanovich -- a Mineo friend -- said that while Mineo was gay, the murder was a random robbery, not lifestyle related, as was rumored by some. And the killer got out of prison, eventually.