Above: The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Murder Case starring John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands

Television was always for suckers, but there was a time when we were all suckers, happily. Hef remembers. He was born in 1953, though his wear and tear and rock quarry voice initially made me guess 1945. His roommate and best buddy, Kid, is the same age but looks ten years younger. He remembers when TV was good and true, too. They are both living in the quiet afterlife that follows (if one survives) decades of dope and jail time. Plenty of time to conjure up the good-and-true era via the DVD player. The boys generally go for crime and punishment: Perry Mason, Daniel Boone, Annie Oakley, Superman, The Fugitive. What stands out in my eyes: Even the mediocre shows had a scintillating cinematic quality. The basic dynamism and construction Perry Mason is indistinguishable from its big screen counterparts–the serialized movie adventures of Mr. Moto, Roy Rogers, Charlie Chan and Sherlock Holmes. Those gems we watch on dollar store double feature discs with labels like “Saturday Matinee.” (Holmes and Watson show up in both their black-and-white big screen incarnations and their later color British television guises.)

John Cassavetes appears, like a comet, in his “Brilliant but Cancelled” beatnik detective show Johnny Staccato. And there he is again, as a desperate fugitive in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His gaze and the edge in his whispered threats to the young woman he’s holding hostage are XXX-rated. Indeed, this guy was too brilliant, too keen to realities that 50’s television could only sample in small doses, to be anything but cancelled. Another genius, Robert Altman, turns up as director of a heartstopping, hilarious Hitchcock episode in which we bite our nails over whether Joseph Cotten will escape the office he’s accidentally locked himself in– the same office where’s he’s just killed a woman. It’s Shadow of a Doubt crashing into Psycho. …Read more