Towards the middle of this movie, I imagined Hitchcock building one of those 1/120 scale models of railroad towns1 most meticulously, and then taking sheer fiendish delight in terrorizing it with a toy Godzilla or a sandbucket avalanche.
Wasn’t too far off (surprisingly). It was his favorite movie for this sort of pleasure:
This was my father’s favourite movie, and it was because he loved bringing the menace into a small town2, into a family that had never known any bad things happen to them. They adored this uncle. They just adored him. Yet they had no idea what he is like. The whole suspense of the movie is, “When are they going to find out?”
And then there’s this exchange:
CHARLIE
Oh, what’s the matter with you two ? Do you always have to talk about killing people?HERB
We’re not talking about killing people.JOSEPH
Herb’s talking about killing me, and I’m talking about killing him.ANN
It’s your father’s way of relaxing.CHARLIE
Can’t he find some other way to relax? Can’t we have a little peace and quiet without dragging in poisons all the time?
Here’s a nice illustration of all the standard sizes. Very few ‘clean’ numbers like 1/24, 1/32, 1/48, or even 1/100. Huh.↩︎
The thick black smoke at Uncle Charlie’s arrivals is meant to be a bad portent.↩︎
