Runtime: 99 minutes
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Squared (Natwick and Dunnock)
From: Universal
Couldn't have had more people here if I'd sold tickets.
My last Alfred Hitchcock movie (it may be a few weeks before I see another one... or maybe it'll be a few months), it will be one that is abnormal for Old Alfred. Of course the vast majority of his work has at least a few comedic moments but films that were comedies first & foremost were quite rare. As I DVR'ed this a few days ago and figured the picture would look great-it did-last night was finally the time to discover if this would tickle my funny bone. As apparent from my nice rating, it did.
In the woods outside a bucolic small Vermont town, the titular Harry is found dead; various people stumble into him-sometimes literally-but as this was absurd, the residents don't seem too concerned about treating the corpse with a proper dignity-rather, they have their own concerns and are more worried about being seen with the cadaver by the law than letting someone like a coroner know about it or even feeling sad that he passed away.
Thankfully it wasn't (usually) too illogical in the nutty world it resided in and there were various colorful characters seen, from an old British man who was pretty awesome and was happy to go on a date (Edmund Gwenn) to a lady with a great pixie cut and young son-what a combo Shirley MacLaine and a pre Leave it to Beaver Jerry Mathers was; this was her film debut-to a quirky artist, a general store owner and more. The script provides plenty of darkly humorous laughs so the movie was rather humorous to me.
A tremendous bonus was that this was actually filmed in rural Vermont and it was during the fall season. Those worldwide may not know this but at least in the United States and probably Canada, the New England region is famous at that time of year for the leaves changing color and it is a popular destination for tourists. Throughout the movie leaves of various hues are seen and it was a gorgeous sight. The Trouble with Harry was a nice change of pace-as many movies very good or better that Hitch did, most were in a similar wheelhouse so something different was a swell idea.
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