User Reviews

This episode involves a woman who is being harassed by another women because of events that took place around a wedding--one that was cancelled. A lawyer is brought in to try to get one of the women to cease and desist. But unfortunately there are long scenes that are obviously there to take up space and time. Kevin McCarthy is in the middle of everything, not knowing what the heck is going on. In the end, we have a surreal mirror thing that is so obtuse. I couldn't wait for them to get back to what the real issues were. In the end we have a ridiculous view of a split personality. The whole episode seemed as though it was taking a year.

IMO, better than average episode. Good twist ending that maybe went on too long. Robin, the model, is played by the gorgeous Peggy Moffitt.

Helen (Joan Hackett) contacts her lawyer because she's apparently been receiving threatening calls from a crazed woman named Helen. And, according to everyone who's known Helen, she's incredibly unstable and dangerous...so why would Helen contact a lawyer and, if so, why wouldn't the lawyer contact the police? Or why wouldn't they get a restraining order? This really makes the episode a bit confusing. I know if someone was supposed to be threatening me, I wouldn't call my lawyer. Plus, later in the show, the lawyer (Kevin McCarthy) thinks Helen might have done something to the photographer....so why didn't he phone the police? This aspect of the show just didn't make a lot of sense. Someone this vicious, unstable and violent surely would merit a call to the police or District Attorney.

Now when you get to see Helen in action, she does appear to be a total mess. She has a drinking problem and she shows many of the symptoms of what psychologists would label a 'Borderline Personality'. And, whether or not Helen is making these threats, Helen is a total mess...a seemingly dangerous mess.

As for the big twist goes, however, I did figure it out early on...and this is probably the case for most viewers. In light of Hitchcock's film, "Psycho", it's easy enough to guess. Plus, there really aren't too many other options as to what REALLY is going on in the story. Still, it is a fascinating episode....flawed but interesting.

Squeaky-voiced Dorothy (Nolan) really has a mad on at ordinary girl Helen (Hackett). She thinks Helen ruined her wedding engagement to the the girl's brother. Now Dorothy makes threatening calls to harass poor Helen. Sick of the annoyance, Helen finally hires attorney Blackshear (McCarthy) to go after the stubborn Dorothy. Naturally, being Hitchcock, not everything is exactly as it appears.

In my view, it's an uneven entry that would have worked better in the 30-minute format. Too many scenes at the photographer's, for example, smack of padding, while McCarthy's largely wasted in a routine role. Then too, the climactic sequence would have more impact if it didn't linger well beyond its reveal. Nonetheless, the story's a chance for the star-crossed Joan Hackett to show her acting chops, which she does. Plus, special effects gets a workout setting up the baroque flashback, which is quite unusual for TV of the time. But then that's why many of us catch these entries, since we can always expect the unexpected.

OK entry, with the biggest drawback being that you should see the ending coming from a mile away. Joan Hackett is always good, but Kevin McCarthy's role, unfortunately, is to mostly stand around looking confused. The most memorable parts of this one for me were brief appearances by George Furth as a high-strung photographer and exotic-looking swimsuit model Peggy Moffitt, perfectly cast as an exotic-looking swimsuit model.

I'm not going to talk about the plot--you can read about that elsewhere on this page. But the problem with a show where the real heart of the thing working is that you don't see the ending coming is that if you do there might not be much that will hold your interest. And in this one I knew it from the first scene. I'm not sure who to blame for this, maybe it's just part of the source novels problem too, though I think that would be a better format to pull this off in. I also saw, but don't remember if the 80's remake of this episode works better or not.

And of course if you're a fan of this series you should be well aware that many of them will feature what in some circles is called a "snap" ending. Now true this story goes on a bit after that so it's not the whole story.

Rather than have a big speech at the end to explain it all this episode instead goes another direction with a long very complicated--and only partly effective, flashback montage played out in a mirror. It must have taken a good amount of the shows 4 day shooting schedule to create the material for this scene--which is like, though perhaps more complicated--than the key nightmare scene in VERTIGO. It has a ton of optical effects, one striking image of an eyeball, and a lot of pretty cheesy lightning bolt transitions. It's really elaborate. Some of it does work and a lot of work went into it. I don't think this kind of thing was director Newman's strongest skill.

But another thing here is this is just an elaborate way to explain it all and having that sort of conventional explaining at the end is still a bit of a dull moment even when they jazz it up this way.

A good try and the most interesting element of this episode but not a total success this sequence.

Joan Hackett was a terrific actress who died far too young, but even she can't totally pull off the admittedly almost impossible to pull off final scene, though it's nice to see her try. The show has an original score by Leonard Roseman which works and he does a lot of work for that dream scene--but he can't beat Herrmann's music for the same thing in Vertigo. Not that he's trying to necessarily.

Other elements of this show move pretty quickly. The whole episode follows a sort of Italian Giallo format. Including the quirky detective who, in this one, is chomping on sugar cubes. At one point he says "It's good for quick energy." The sequence with the photography studio is kind of shrilly acted.

Hitchcock wrap around is one of the simplest of the series with one very funny throw away statement in the opening, though the station break and warp up segments are pretty dull.

I rate this episode a good swing but a clear miss. Decide for yourself maybe it's a home run.

I remember seeing this Alfred Hitchcock episode on its first broadcast when I was a kid, and I thought it was pretty disturbing. Seeing it again as an adult, I still think "Beast in View" is a great story (it's based on Margaret Millar's Edgar Award winning novel of the same title), but this TV adaptation is really not as good as it could/should have been, which is a shame. For one thing, the director makes some choices that telegraph the ending far too early (almost immediately, in fact), and for another, the casting of the principal roles is problematic. Joan Hackett is not awkward and plain enough for the main character Helen Clarvoe, a somewhat reclusive woman who is being stalked and harassed by someone from her past, while Kathleen Nolan, with her inexplicable southern accent, is not convincing, even in the flashbacks, as the "pretty" and bubbly Dorothy Johnson whom everyone seems to have preferred to Helen. As for Kevin McCarthy, his Paul Blackshear, the lawyer/investigator who serves as the stand-in for the audience, is a bit on the bland side, though truthfully he is not given much to work with script-wise. At least some supporting characters Blackshear encounters at a photographer's studio are entertainingly quirky, courtesy of actors George Furth, Peggy Moffitt (a well-known real life fashion model for designer Rudy Gernreich), and Anthony McBride.

A few effective moments of suspense do occur throughout, and the solution to the mystery will probably come as a genuine surprise to some viewers (it actually did to me the first time I saw it). But after the truth is revealed toward the end, there is a very strange (and dated-looking) special effects sequence which goes on for too long, ultimately leading to a very anti-climactic final moment (unlike the novel's ending, which is *much* darker). "Beast in View" is not one of the best Hitchcock episodes, but IMO the story is still good enough on its own merits to make it worth catching.

"Beast in View" features acclaimed Broadway actress Joan Hackett as Helen Clarvoe, who hires attorney Paul Blackshear (Kevin McCarthy) to help deter the intrusive presence of Dorothy Johnson (Kathleen Nolan). Some years earlier, Dorothy's impending marriage to Helen's brother was shattered when Helen revealed Dorothy to have embezzled money from her future in laws, since blaming Helen for ruining her life. Blackshear manages to find Dorothy and speak to her, but she denies harassing Helen, while fighting off another hangover and displaying the wedding dress that she never got to wear. The climax certainly echoes one of Hitchcock's most famous films, just a few years too late. George Furth appears as a photographer whose shooting death again points the finger at the prime suspect.

This is a pretty good cast in a too-complex story. I knew Joan Hackett ever so slightly before she died -- such a lovely person whom I first saw in "The Group," which came out at around the same time. She's supposed to be plain in this plot, but she is in fact quite classy and beautiful, making her motives unclear. Kathleen Nolan is supposed to be the beautiful one, but is in fact so twangy of accent that she loses any appeal, too reminiscent of Kate in "The Real McCoys". I was intrigued by the gratuitous beefcake appearance of an actor named Anthony McBride, one of too many characters in the plot, playing a model who looks like Tab Hunter but with a finer physique. I figured he was somebody's new "discovery," but he seems to have disappeared from the acting scene to become a producer. There is, ultimately, too much going on in this episode, which includes young George Furth as a photographer and Kevin McCarthy as the romantic lead.