In this episode of the Hitch 20, Jeffrey Michael Bays looks at how Hitchcock still has a strong influence over multiple generations of directors. Plus, how unpredictable characters can heighten tension for the audience, as in “Wet Saturday” of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
You can watch “Wet Satuday” on Netflix or on Hulu
The episode is an interesting opener for Hitchcock’s second season. “Wet Saturday” was a short story by John Collier originally printed in 1938 in the New Yorker magazine. Since then it has been a perennial adaptation on radio and television with the Hitchcock version being very true to source material (even borrowing many lines of dialogue). The short story concludes at the same place as the teleplay – the epilogue which Hitchcock provides was probably forced upon by the network – but in my opinion it makes more sense as a logical conclusion.
