The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (TV Series) The Black Curtain (1962) User Reviews

Hitch and Woolrich: Noir brought to the TV screen

[binapiraeus · 7/10 · 11 August 2014]

Another great episode of that fascinating TV series "The Hitchcock Hour", which surprised us every time with a different kind of story, a different kind of atmosphere... Now, in this case, the story was written by Cornell Woolrich, probably one of the 'big four' of the 'hard boiled' school of crime writers together with Hammett, Cain and Chandler: he used to invent gritty and unusual tales about life in the big city - so we might well expect that this one is something like a 'TV Noir'. And it is.

The plot isn't exactly new: a man, after being hit on the head in a dark alley by some thugs, comes to and, helped by some friendly strangers like a cab driver and a drugstore owner, slowly starts to realize that he can't remember the past three years of his life! And of course, that's not enough: there's an unsolved murder involved, too...

Wonderful entertainment especially for Noir fans; a whole 'Film Noir' packed into 45 minutes of TV show length - which makes the plot all the more dense and suspenseful!

Richard Basehart and Lola Albright

[kevinolzak · 8/10 · 19 February 2012]

"The Black Curtain" is an intriguing Cornell Woolrich adaptation featuring Richard Basehart as the victim of an attempted mugging who comes to believing himself to be Phil Townsend, a bridegroom on his way to his wedding, at 1:00 in the morning. A helpful cab driver (Harold J. Stone) helps him track down his fiancée (Gail Kobe), who reveals that she has been married for three years to the same private detective she'd hired to find him. Phil now must piece together the events of the past three years, discovering the one person who knows his new identity, Ruth (Lola Albright), who tells him he is David Webber, a bodyguard for her wealthy uncle, and murder suspect in a woman's death. Richard Basehart was best remembered for his starring role on Irwin Allen's television series based on his own 1961 feature, "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." James Farentino plays a blackmailing thug, Frank Sully a drunk, and Celia Lovsky a landlady.

Not entirely logical, but entertaining.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 28 April 2021]

When the story begins, Phillip (Richard Basehart) is mugged and beaten by two thugs. Fortunately, a cab driver (Harold Stone) comes along and the muggers leave Phillip in the gutter...unconscious. Now here is the weird part..after the beating, Phillip suddenly regains his memory...as he apparently had amnesia before the attack! So, in a way, being beaten up is a blessing. However, apparently Phillip has had the amnesia for a very long time and a lot has changed.

Now you would THINK at this point Phillip or the cabbie would get the idea to go to the nearest hospital or police station. In fact, NOT doing this is pretty bizarre. But, this is the "Alfred Hitchcock Hour"...and all this occurred just in the first ten minutes or so! So what's next for the guy? Well, things do get a lot crazier...including a guy who is now shooting at him...and he has no idea who this is nor why!

In many ways, this episode plays less like an episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" and more like the plot of a film noir movie. In fact, Edmond O'Brien actually made a noir movie with such a plot ("Man in the Dark"). This isn't a complaint...more an observation about its style.

Generally, this is a good episode. A few times I felt Richard Basehart overacted (especially when dealing with Ruth) and I was annoyed to see Ruth just standing there when the two men were fighting over a gun.... I HATE that cliche of the frightened woman who does NOTHING when two guys are fighting to the death! But in spite of these qualms, overall it was interesting and worth seeing...if not entirely logical.

Flawed Noir

[dougdoepke · 21 February 2015]

It's a complicated jigsaw as amnesiac Basehart tries to piece together a former life he's forgotten. Whatever that former identity, someone's now out to kill him. With help from others, maybe he can figure things out before the next bullet connects. So it's a race against time. Good thing the producers got the highly skilled Richard Basehart for the lead, since the role's very demanding. Fortunately, Basehart measures up. It's interesting to watch a guy play observer to his own life instead of agent. As might be expected from a Cornell Woolrich story, gloom hangs heavy over events like some noirish cloud. Also good to see that Lola Albright has a life after Peter Gunn—but she's not her usual glamour-puss, having to dress down to fit in. It's the visuals and acting that carry this entry. Frankly, I agree with reviewer Sol: the narrative's much too complex. It's like they're trying to cram 200-pages of story into an hour's runtime and leave nothing out. A tighter screenplay could have added up to a noirish gem, instead of a regrettably flawed entry.

What choice did I have! What choice did they give me!

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 28 June 2012]

***SPOILERS*** Being jumped from behind and bashed over the head by two neighborhood muggers Phillip Townsend's, Richard Basehart, brains are so scrambled that he forgot what he did for the last three years! In fact Townsend thinks it's three years earlier and he's on his way to city hall to meet his sweetheart Virgnia, Gail Kobe, in order to get married! That's at 1:00 AM in the morning! Rescued from getting robbed by a friendly taxi driver Maury Epstein, Harold J.Stone, who offers to give him a ride home Townsend has no idea where he lives! And later that evening after tracking down his fiancée Virginia Townsend finds out that she's been married for the last three years and has a two year old son with her husband and ex-private detective, whom she hired to find him three years ago Frank Carlin,Lee Phillips!

It's when Townsned runs into the two muggers Bernie & Chuck, James Farenino & Neil Nephew, who bopped him over the head and tried to rob him everything becomes crystal clear to what's been happening to him over the last 24 hours. The fact comes out from and old newspaper clipping in his wallet that he Phillip Townsend is really David Webber a fugitive from the law! Webber is on the lamb for the brutal murder of this woman found on the Burke Estate where he was living at! As we and Townsend/Webber soon find out he was Burke's bodyguard and was possibly having an affair with the woman that was murdered!

***SPOILERS*** With surprise after surprise hitting him over the head the biggest surprise of them all is that Webber was having a hot and heavy affair with Burke's daughter Ruth, Lola Albright, at the time of the murder which complicates things even more then they already are! And on top of all that Webber or better yet Townsend's former lover Virginia's husband Frank Carlin is out to kill him! Not because he was in love with Carlin's wife three years ago but in order to keep the truth of who in fact did killed the woman that Townsend is suspected in murdering!

One of the most confusing Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes I've ever seen with so many sub-plots and characters connected to them that I ended up getting a severe migraine headache in trying to follow it! Not to be be left out of the story Bernie & Chuck, after their debut appearance, smelling big money also got back into the act in trying to blackmail Webber in paying them off, with the $87.00 and change he had on him, to keep them from turning him over to the police! The ending if you survived, by watching the episode, long enough to see it made things all right for all involved. In that it finally put to an end to who murdered the woman found on the Burke Estate, in Webber's room no less, in order to give it an happy ending!

"I can't even remember."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 25 August 2022]

Shocking! Shocking! No, not the story so much, which has its share of anomalies, but did you get a load of the menu prices at the all-night diner? Present day viewers won't be able to relate to a thirty-five cent malted milkshake, a sixty cent plate of hash, a ham dinner for seventy-five cents, or if you're really on a budget, a cheese sandwich for twenty cents! I get the biggest kick out of watching old shows like this and 'The Twilight Zone' that often featured luncheon and diner scenes with era prices posted bringing us back down memory lane to the way things used to be. But wait a minute, something else very odd about this story. The druggist's (George Mitchell) shift was from midnight till eight in the morning, but why would a drug store in a bad neighborhood be open all night? There were no shoppers, and if not for the principals of the story, no one else would have been there! The amnesia angle played out by Philip Townsend (Richard Basehart) seemed credible enough at the outset, but got more and more complicated as the story progressed. In a way, Basehart's character was one lucky guy having fallen in love with two good looking women (Gail Kobe, Lola Albright), though it's never explained how Phil Townsend got amnesia in the first place. Which is why, after you move on, you'll probably forget about everything that happened here.

I Just Forgot!

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 6 May 2023]

Richard Basehart plays a dangerous man who has migraines and slips into amnesia. A punk hits him on the head and he suddenly loses the last three years of his life. Things have changed including the marriage of his former fiancee. He has a child. The last memory of her was their wedding day when he didn't show up. He has also been accused of murder for a woman found in his apartment. I remember Basehart as the Captain on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea a few years later. The loss of memory is a tough sell and this is no exception where the writers must deal with a guy's past which may have been violent. Above average episode.