Fans of great cinema won’t want to miss this: all of the following Alfred Hitchcock classics are currently available at discount prices in Amazon’s Instant Video store! Prices are subject to change at any time, so be sure to pick up the ones you want right away. Descriptions below are from IMDB.
The Birds (PG-13, 4/5 stars, closed captions available, currently priced at $4.99 to own)
Melanie Daniels is the modern rich socialite, part of the jet-set who always gets what she wants. When lawyer Mitch Brenner sees her in a pet shop, he plays something of a practical joke on her, and she decides to return the favor. She drives about an hour north of San Francisco to Bodega Bay, where Mitch spends the weekends with his mother Lydia and younger sister Cathy.
Soon after her arrival, however, the birds in the area begin to act strangely. A seagull attacks Melanie as she is crossing the bay in a small boat, and then, Lydia finds her neighbor dead, obviously the victim of a bird attack. Soon, birds in the hundreds and thousands are attacking anyone they find out of doors. There is no explanation as to why this might be happening, and as the birds continue their vicious attacks, survival becomes the priority.
– Written by garykmcd
North by Northwest (4.5/5 stars, not rated, closed captions available, currently priced at $7.99 to own)
Madison Avenue advertising man Roger Thornhill finds himself thrust into the world of spies when he is mistaken for a man by the name of George Kaplan. Foreign spy Philip Vandamm and his henchman Leonard try to eliminate him but when Thornhill tries to make sense of the case, he is framed for murder.
Now on the run from the police, he manages to board the 20th Century Limited bound for Chicago where he meets a beautiful blond, Eve Kendall, who helps him to evade the authorities. His world is turned upside down yet again when he learns that Eve isn’t the innocent bystander he thought she was.
Not all is as it seems however, leading to a dramatic rescue and escape at the top of Mt. Rushmore.
– Written by garykmcd
Lifeboat (4.5/5 stars, not rated, closed captions available, currently priced at $6.99 to own)
After their ship is attacked by a U-Boat in the mid-Atlantic, several of the passengers and crew survive. Among are a millionaire, an aristocrat, a passenger who managed to survive with her baby, a stoker, and a purser.
Not many have much experience at navigation or actually manning a boat. They rescue another person from the water: a German sailor, a survivor from the U-Boat that also sank. He says he can’t speak English and the others don’t trust him – with good reason as it turns out he speaks English perfectly and was actually the U-Boat’s captain.
As they try to navigate their small boat to the West Indies some will succumb to death and all will reveal their true nature.
– Written by garykmcd
Dial M for Murder (4.5/5 stars, PG, closed captions available, currently priced at $7.99 to own)
After learning that his wife Margot had a brief affair with mystery writer Mark Halliday, Tony Wendice decides he’s going to kill her. He wants to provide himself with an ironclad alibi and so blackmail a one-time schoolmate with a shady past, Charles Swann, to do the killing for him. The plan is simple. He will give Swann a key to their flat and while he and Halliday are out at a dinner, Swan can let himself into the flat and strangle her…
– Written by garykmcd
…but when Margot successfully defends herself from the intruder, the plot takes a turn Tony never saw coming.
Vertigo (PG, 4.5/5 stars, closed captions available, currently priced at $4.99 to own)
Police detective John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson is asked by an old college friend, Gavin Elster, if he would have a look into his wife Madeleine’s odd behavior. Lately, she’s taken to believing that she is the reincarnation of a woman who died many years ago and Elster is concerned about her sanity. Scottie follows her and rescues her from an apparent suicide attempt when she jumps into San Francisco bay. He gets to know her and falls in love with her. They go to an old mission church and he is unable to stop her from climbing to the top of the steeple, owing to his vertigo, where she jumps to her death.
A subsequent inquiry finds that she committed suicide but faults Scottie for not stopping her in the first place. Several months later, he meets Judy Barton, a woman who is the spitting image of Madeleine. He can’t explain it, but she is identical to the woman who died. He tries to re-make her into Madeleine’s image by getting her to dye her hair and wear the same type of clothes. He soon begins to realize however that he has been duped and was a pawn in a complex piece of theater that was meant to end in tragedy.
– Written by garykmcd