The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Don't Look Behind You (1962)

In 1962, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour premiered, expanding on the popular half-hour thriller series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Like its predecessor, each episode opened with an introduction from the Master of Suspense himself Mr. Hitchcock, who teased his audience about the story to follow. 

"Don't Look Behind You" was only the second episode in this new hour-long format and, unfortunately, it played out like a half-hour episode stretched to fit the new timeslot. 

The episode, based on a novel by Samuel Rogers, was about a crazed killer who stalked the woods at night murdering young women in the college town of Woodside. One evening, Daphne (Vera Miles) decides to take a chance and crosses the woods as a shortcut to get to a dinner party - she makes it out alive but knows for certain that someone was following her close behind. At the party, arriving shortly later, is her fiancé Harold (Jeffrey Hunter), a psychology professor who looks a bit bedraggled. Also arriving late is Dave (Dick Sargaent) a science teacher who has a crush on Daphne. Another admirer of hers is Edwin (Alf Kjellin), a pianist who has a bent towards the morbid. 

Harold comes up with the brilliant idea of using Daphne as bait so he can catch the killer himself and throughout the episode we are supposed to wonder whether the lunatic is Harold himself, Dave, or Edwin, all of whom happen to be in the woods the same night Daphne is walking through it. All three men look crazy but Harold seems to be the most dangerous and one cannot help but wonder how Daphne can be so blind as to not realize it. 

"Pain is only a secret name for pleasure, my darling"

The wonderful director John Brahm (The Lodger, Hangover Square) directed "Don't Look Behind You" and, while the scenes through the woods are atmospheric, the episode as a whole is a letdown. This could have been a tense thriller with nail-biting "who can the killer be?" ending, but instead it is so obvious that most of the episode fails to build any tension. Jeffrey Hunter's character of Harold should have been a sympathetic intelligent man whom Daphne relies on, this would have given her plausible reason for staying in Woodside with a killer on the loose and would have made the ending have more of that Hitchcockian-twist. 

"Don't Look Behind You" features one of the best introductions of any of the Alfred Hitchcock episodes with Vera Miles walking in a flowing white dress down a secluded dark wooded shortcut, but overall, it just fails to stir up the shivers like any decent Alfred Hitchcock episode should. Nevertheless, Vera Miles gives a wonderful performance as the innocent victim and there is a cast of familiar faces including Abraham Sofaer (Elephant Walk), Madge Kennedy, and Ralph Roberts (Bells are Ringing).