Thursday, July 09, 2020

TV review - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" - "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (1961) **1/2

This ep was not aired due to violent content - it ends with Diana Dors about to be cut in half by a buzzsaw. It's actually a cracker of a story - Robert Bloch wrote it and he knew his stuff - but it's almost sunk by the terrible acting of Brando de Wilde.

I'm not a de Wilde fan - I know, Shane, Member of the Wedding - but he lacked technique and he's dreadful here, falling into "disabled" acting. He plays a mentally unstable boy who falls in with a circus and gets obsessed by magicians wife Dors who is having an affair with a strongman.

Dors is perfectly cast as a trashy circus performer - the other actors are fine too. De Wilde is awful.

The concept for this was strong enough for a feature.

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