STRANGERS ON A TRAIN - Alfred Hitchcock (1951)

 Howdy, and Welcome to another Weird and Whorled Wednesday in The Dungeon!

This week, the Alfred Hitchcock film we watched was the classic "Strangers On A Train" from 1951! It's a pretty amazing piece of work, and contains all the Hitchcock elements like suspense and droll humour, that make his films so freakin' awesome!

 

I got this DVD on eBay from China as part of a very inexpensive A.H. set, and this particular disc was broken! I wrote the guy who sent it to me, and he replaced it in just a little over a week! This guy's got a future as a businessman, unlike another Chinese eBay seller who hasn't managed to send me a $7.99 phone battery in over two months! Avoid this guy like the plague! Pick and choose, like everything in life, there's good ones and bad ones! This particular cat is awesome, and here is the place to get this set! Just might be the bargain of the century!

The two strangers on the train are Farley (The Rope) Granger as tennis player Guy Haines.....

.....And Robert Walker as psychotic spoiled rich kid Bruno Antony! Robert only ended up with 23 acting credits to his name because he died at the age of 32 from a bad reaction to prescription drugs! Now you know why I don't want to take Lyrica!

Mr. Hitchcock has his cameo as a guy with a cello boarding the train.

Guy's estranged psycho-bitch wife works in a record store!
Kasey (Two Lost Worlds) Rogers plays Miriam Haines!

Bruno and his Mom have got kind of a strange relationship!
The Mother was played by Marion (The Graduate) Lorne!

Bruno laughs at his Mother's painting because he thinks it looks like his Father who he hates!

So the basic story is Bruno offers to kill Guy's wife, if Guy will reciprocate by killing Bruno's Dad, but Guy is repelled by the whole concept and tells Bruno to F off, but Bruno, being a psycho, is not real receptive and decides to go ahead and carry out his part of the deal!
He tracks guy's wife to this amusement park where she is slutting around with a couple of guys!

Having a great time on the carousel! You can see Bruno in the background!
He's stalking her, but she is such a flirt, she just thinks it's a strong come-on!

The Tunnel Of Love ride goes to Magic Isle, and when Bruno gets Miriam alone he viciously strangles her, and the whole scene is seen through her soon to be broken glasses!

How's this for a fine trilogy, the Morton Family that includes Dungeon super hero Leo G. (Topper, Tarantula) Carroll as the Father, Senator Morton, Ruth (Jungle Queen, Outer Limits) Roman as Leo's daughter, and Guy's girlfriend Anne Morton, and Alfred Hitchcock's daughter Patricia as Ruth's little sister Barbara Morton!

Even though Bruno's family is equally rich, he still has to weasel his way into the Morton socialite circle! At a party, in a casual conversation, Bruno decides to show Norma Varden as Mrs. Cunningham, how he would murder someone if he had to! During this act, Bruno spots Barbara Morton, and because of her glasses being similar to Miriam's, he freaks out and actually starts to strangle Mrs. Cunningham before he passes out! Norma Varden made a career out of being characters whose title started with Mrs., Aunt, Mother, Dr., Frau, Miss, Wife, Lady, Ma, Madame, etc. etc. and she was really good at it!

For reasons I'm not willing to explain, the whole story goes back to the amusement park where Miriam was strangled by Bruno, and a crazy out of control merry-go-round!

Bruno and Guy fight it out to the finish on this high speed roundabout!

In Truffaut's interview with Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred says this scene terrified him, because this old man's head was only about an inch away from the bottom of the insane flying horses ride!

Going what looks to be about 60 miles per hour, the carousel finally careens to a stop and implodes after that old man throws on the brake!

The crowd of distraught family members and onlookers has no idea why this all happened!
How it would have been reported in the media is anyone's guess, but you could probably place a pretty sound bet that it wasn't accurate!

I'll leave you with this tricky poster of Alfred lifting the 'L' out of Stranglers, turning it into Strangers!
That's the kind of underlining chicanery Alfred Hitchcock constantly throws at you! If you're lucky to catch half of it, then you did good, because he was a lot smarter than most of us!