Alfred Hitchcock Presents 07x39: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

There’s an old urban legend about an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that was so gruesome – so disturbing – that it was never aired on network television. Of course, we all know that urban legends are blown out of proportion, and whatever kernel of truth they were based on is buried under years and years of exaggeration.

But this urban legend is true.

By 1962, Robert Bloch had a nice sideline as a screenwriter. As a teenager, he had become the youngest member of the Lovecraft Circle, and had since published countless short stories and novels. One of those novels, Psycho, had been adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960, and it made quite the splash. After that, Hollywood came calling and Bloch quickly established himself as a reliable source of spine-chilling scripts.

A good number of those scripts were adaptations of his own short stories, so when he was asked to pen an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents based on his 1942 tale “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” it didn’t seem like it was going to be anything but another paycheck for a job well done.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents 01x27: Help Wanted

Lorne Greene is a national treasure. We literally learn about him in school here in Canada; it’s not optional. He’s up there with Walter Pidgeon, Christopher Plummer, and Leslie Nielson, all of whom we also learn about in school during a unit called “Northern Lights” – we watch documentaries about their lives narrated by Lorne Greene. (Yes, Lorne Greene narrates his own. Yes, it’s in third person.)

Anyway, LG’s b-day was on February 12, but I was doing Mardi Gras and I’d already stopped in the middle of that for Inventors’ Day and Valentine’s. And yes, we do need a Lorne Green day even though we’re recapping Bonanza in chronological order, because Lorne Greene is important.

And all that is why we’re watching an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that features TV’s best loved dad in a very different kind of role.