Saturday 9

Saturday 9: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" Theme

 
This week's song was chosen because this is the last Saturday 9 before Halloween. Are you unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

 

1) The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, was born in England. Name another pop culture contribution England has made.

 
2) This week's song is recognized as the theme to Hitchcock's long-running TV show, but "Funeral March for a Marionnette" is a classic piece written for piano in the late 1870s by Charles Gounod. Do you often listen to classical music? No. I really don't care for it. At all.

3) Janet Leigh's shower scene in  Hitchcock's Psycho is considered one of the scariest sequences ever filmed. What's the most frightening movie you've ever seen? Yeah, I'll stick with Psycho. Because it's a horror movie, and since the subject matter is so lurid, people often disregard how nearly perfect it is. Shot for shot, it's a great piece of film making. I think the quality is why it's so enduringly scary.

4) Hitchcock admitted that he "never trusted birds," and he took that fear and turned it into the movie, The Birds. Is there a member of the animal kingdom that just gives you "the creeps?" Squirrels. I recently shared this story for Sunday Stealing, but here's the truncated version: When I was about 5, my dad told me this really vivid, scary story about how a little boy (just my age) was bit by the squirrel he was feeding (just like my dad had caught me doing). The squirrel was rabid and sunk his sharp teeth into the boy, and wouldn't let go. The police came and shot the squirrel, who wouldn't even open its jaws in death. The poor boy was raced to the hospital in an ambulance, with the bloody squirrel carcass hanging from his arm. Naturally none of that is true, but it's stayed with me ever since.

 
5) Halloween will soon be upon us. Will you carve a jack o'lantern this year?  Nope

 

6) What candy will trick or treaters get at your house? All they'll get is disappointment. I won't be home.

 

7)  When you went trick or treating, did you prefer fantasy costumes (like a storybook character) or scary ones (like a monster)? I don't remember many of my costumes, but since they were chosen by my mother, I know they had to be fantasy because she wasn't into monsters.

 

8)  Which candy was your favorite? Which one were you disappointed to find in your trick or treat bag? I love Mary Janes. I hate candy corn.

9) Which do you find scarier -- cemeteries or haunted houses? Haunted houses.