The Trouble with Harry 1955
Alfred Hitchcock movies can be a mixed bag, but there is usually something interesting going on. The Trouble with Harry is more of a comedy than anything, though it still has a dark and somewhat macabre sense of humor. The cast is great. Jerry Mathers plays a little kid a couple of years before he would play the lead role in Leave It to Beaver and does a great job. His mother is played by Shirley MacLaine in her first starring role. Her love interest is played by John Forsythe, who is best known to me anyway as the voice of Charlie on Charlie's Angels and he has that same great voice here, though the role is much more substantial. One of the other leads is Edmund Gwenn who was iconic as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. So it is a fun cast and there is already a great director in Hitchcock, plus a really sharp screenplay by John Michael Hays who had already done Rear Window and To Catch a Thief with Hitchcock. The movie is a little goofy at times, but there is some great dialogue as people in a small Vermont town deal surprisingly nonchalantly with a dead body. I am probably a little overly impressed because I didn't have the greatest of expectations for this movie and it definitely exceeded them. There are a few flaws, but this is a gem of a dark rom com. Also it is nice that the movie is in color to show off the brilliant yellow fall colors, nicely restored, so much so that you can constantly see flies in scenes which the actors do a nice job of ignoring.
Written: 07 Aug 2025
Owned on: Digital