Hitch’s Cock

by: Punchinello, Dec/13/03

Alfred Hitchcock was a great film director—and a sick little monkey. Hitch knew that only half the thrill of his movies was in the suspense. The other half lay in the innuendo that surrounded the suspense—sex, shame, fetish, fantasy, and the occasional moment of necrophilia. Other fine suspensers and thrillers have been made, but few with the same combination of sugar and spice that Hitch put into his recipe.

Hitch is said to have confided in a gay friend that, if he hadn't met his wife when he was still young, he thought he "could have been a poof," suggesting (even if he was kidding) that the homoerotic subtexts in some of his movies weren't just pipesmoke. Let's take a trip thru these and other psychosexual fetishes he subtly interwove into his work.

Rear Window IMDb

Jimmy Stewart is the voyeur in us all as he spies on his neighbors in the high rise across the courtyard. Even wheelchair bound, how can he be so stupid as to send luscious Grace Kelly over to check out whether or not Raymond Burr has killed his wife? Will she be murdered? Will she be raped? Will Stewart get to watch?

North by Northwest IMDb

Cary Grant, on the lam for a crime he didn't commit, desperately throws himself at elegant Grace Kelly, alone in a private train car, kissing her forcibly and begging her to play along. She doesn't, but ends up hooking up with him anyway. And when they ride off into the sunset in another private train car—this time on their honeymoon—and the train slides into that tunnel, we can't help but replay the moment of their meeting, only this time we know the lady will play along and fuck him all night.

Vertigo IMDb

Jimmy Stewart gets entranced by another man's wife, the woman he's been hired to keep an eye on—a woman who has lost her senses. When she jumps in the ocean, he rescues her and takes her back to his apartment. When she awakens, he has changed out of his wet things—and stripped her naked (which "The Jumper" was based on). Who could blame him for wanting to get his hand on that creamy flesh?

Later, after the first woman succeeds in killing herself, the hero meets another that looks a lot like her and begins fucking her and urging her to change her hair, her clothes, her mannerisms to be more like the dead woman he has fetishized. Kim Novak plays both the sultry loony and the poor, but willing, working girl. (There's a great moment when she tells him, "You know, this ain't the first time I been picked up.) We can only imagine their fevered fucking and the desperate necrophiliac fantasy playing out in Stewart's head.

Notorious IMDb

Cary Grant recruits a notorious sexpot and falls for her before discovering he has to send her off to fuck her former lover, a foreign agent. She is disgusted with him, but does it anyway—half out of anger at him and half out of a desperate desire to please him.

Pouty Ingrid Bergman plays the cuckhold fantasy out to the hilt, even turning the tables by cheating on the villain to be with the man she really wants fucking her. We're only left to wonder if the filthy foreign agent has gotten her pregnant... and if the thought turns Grant on.

(Yes, this plot was basically stolen for Mission Impossible 2. Only steal from the best.)

Strangers on a Train (IMDb)

Two men meet on a train and strike deal—a one-sided deal anyway—to perform a murder for the other. The secretive boy-boy relationship is as creepy as it is homoerotic. No one can know the truth about the strange young man hanging around or our hero's marriage and reputation will be ruined. Was there some cocksucking involved in sealing the deal?

Rope (IMDb)

Hitch explores a fictionalized version of the Leopold and Loeb case, gay preps who killed a younger boy for the sick thrill of it and thought they were too smart to get caught. In this case, the killers don't dump the corpse; they keep it in a chest... so they can serve hors d'ouvres off his makeshift coffin. Do they re-enact the strangulation in their bedroom at night in a fevered asphyxia ass-fuck?

Psycho IMDb

An embezzling tramp gets knifed in the shower when she is at her most naked and vulnerable. Who can forget Janet Leigh's staccato-assisted scream? The killer is a cross-dressing creep hooked on the combination of sex and death of those lovely, dirty girls his mother warned him about. Early on, we learn that he kills and stuffs birds. Does he also stuff the human birds he kills with his cock?

Shadow of a Doubt IMDb

Joseph Cotton returns to his home town to hang out with the family, especially the teenage niece named after him who adores him. It's just too bad when the cops start nosing around and rumors start to fly about the mysterious seducer who marries wealthy women and then kills them. Sweet young Charlie guesses the truth about her Uncle Charlie when the leopard starts to show his spots—and starts a weird, avuncular version of his seduction-and-murder routine on her. Will he get a taste of that teenage pussy first? Will she like it enough to help him instead of turning him in?

The 39 Steps IMDb

This explores the wrong-man scenario that Hitch would perfect in North by Northwest. The wrongly-accused hero hooks up with a lovely (and game) young heroine and sparks fly—including a sequence in which the protagonists check into an inn and must spend the night handcuffed together (which "The 69 Nymphs" was inspired by). This is stuff the Hayes Code would ban a few years later as too racy, but it's not like we get the full kink of an awkward striptease followed by a handcuff fuck. We just have to imagine it.

The Birds IMDb

I don't know. Bird fetish? Tippy Hedron fetish? Beats me.

Hitchcock knew that sex and secrets, crime and suspense, are all wrapped up together, and he knew how to package them in subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) ways that would keep his audience coming back again and again.

Punch Writer, Director, Producer, Bird Wrangler

All Pulp Erotica Editorials:

On Forced Entry (Sep/17/03)

One Year and Counting (Oct/18/03)

Hitch's Cock (Dec/13/03)

Too Helpful (Feb/06/05)

Year Two in Review (Mar/01/05)

Punchinello's Inspiration (May/17/05)

Year Three: Holy Shit Time Flies (Jan/04/06)

Noir and Pulp (May/07/06)

Also check out How to Write Pulp Erotica.

Essay on Hitchcock's sources

Queer Horror on Rope

Hitchcock movies on Amazon