The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (TV Series) Memo from Purgatory (1964) User Reviews

Worth seeing more for the cast than the story.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 9 June 2021]

"Memo from Purgatory" is a decent episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" but it's most notable for its cast. It features some future big stars, such as James Caan and Walter Koenig (Chekov from "Star Trek")...as well as familiar character actors, Tony Musante, Zalman King and Lynn Loring. For this reason alone it is worth seeing.

Jay Shaw (Caan) has a kooky idea...to join a tough street gang and then use this experience to write a story about it. So, he finds the toughest gang (?) and is able to impress the gang leader (Koenig)...enough so that he's invited to become a member. However, one of the gang members (Musante) instantly hates Jay and vows to destroy him.

The story is hard to believe, but also tense and exciting. Not a brilliant episode but a very good one....and most importantly, an original one. It's also notable that many of the episodes preceding this one were HUGE disappointments....so it's good to see the show is capable, still, of a decent episode.

Read the books

[tmrnbn · 8/10 · 2 November 2018]

Read the books: Web of the City and Memos from Purgatory. This is a good approximation, but I think casting could have been better--these kids should have all been much younger, from 14 to 19. Ellison only fit because he was 5 ft 5 and looked 15. Caan was too old and too big (and too blonde). Koenig would have been a much better stand-in for Ellison. They also, by necessity, cut out a lot of the excursions between the initiation and the revelation--how to build a zip-gun, the wrath of chains, the burglary of the gun shop, several gang fights, one-on-ones within the gang, the battle of Epping Forest (wait, that last was from a different group). The story really deserves a longer treatment.

Naked City-style Hitchcock

[siegerrob76 · 7/10 · 14 May 2018]

This episode, featuring an incredibly handsome and appealing 24 year old James Caan and a lovely and appealing 20-year old Lynn Loring, between whom one can feel and almost see the pheromones flying, is so jarringly outside the normal Hitchcock canon that it would have been a more appropriate episode on the 1959-63 naturalistic NY-based and filmed series, The Naked City. Well-done overall.

Powerful drama of street gangs, based on true story

[mlraymond · 10/10 · 22 February 2008]

Harlan Ellison is most often thought of as a science fiction writer, and sometime television critic, but his autobiographical book Memos from Purgatory is a harrowing and compelling true story of his stint as a member of a Brooklyn street gang. This Alfred Hitchcock episode is written by Ellison himself, using material from the book, though it had to be considerably watered down for television at that time. Nowadays, you could probably film it just as he wrote it.

James Caan is excellent as Jay Shaw, the young writer who stands in for Ellison, as he impresses a tough street gang sufficiently to make him a member. Tony Musante is all too believable as a sadistic gang member with a volatile temper, ready to fight Shaw from the start, and resentful of gang leader Tiger's friendship with the new guy. Lynn Loring is beautiful, and touchingly vulnerable underneath her bad girl exterior, as the streetwise girl who falls hard for Shaw, or " Phil Beldone" as he is known to the gang.

Though necessarily limited by the television time constraints and censorship, Memo from Purgatory is still a moving and suspenseful story, with excellent performances and believable atmosphere. It captures some of the real sadness of Ellison's book, as he came to realize that the young hoodlums he was involved with were basically lost and lonely kids, who knew no possibility of a better life.

Highly recommended.

Really Quite Fascinating

[jayraskin1 · 10/10 · 5 May 2010]

"West Side Story" romanticized New York City gangs to the point that people forgot that youth gangs really did terrorize people and were quite nasty in the late 1950's. This episode really brings back the fear that people felt of gangs back then and how really vicious they were.

The episode was written by Harlan Ellison and is quite taunt and engrossing. Joseph Pevney, the director, had done a bunch of pretty good movies in the 1950's including "Tammy and the Batchelor." He stayed in television, directing about 1/6th of the original "Star Trek" episodes, among many other T.V. series.

The acting is great. James Caan is a sweet and intelligent hero and as handsome as he has ever been in a movie. Tony Musante ("Toma")is terrifying and Walter Koenig (Chekov on "Star Trek")is intense and complex as the gang leader. Based on this episode, it is obviously a shame that his career was sidetracked by his silly role in "Star Trek".

It is one of the best Hitchcock episodes. Don't miss it.

"Memo..." not in usual Hitchcock mold

[chuck-reilly · 26 October 2007]

Occasionally, Alfred Hitchcock would forgo his usual suspense vehicle and give viewers an hour-long public service episode. In "Memo from Purgatory" the story involves Juvenile Delinquency and how it preys on the community-at-large. A young James Caan, who is interested in writing about juvenile crime first-hand, infiltrates a New York City gang and records their activities. At first, Walter Koenig and Tony Musante, the leaders of the group, take a liking to him but eventually their suspicions are aroused. When Musante mistakenly stumbles on Caan's diary of events, he convinces the other gang members to kill him. The rest of the story is predictable and follows the pattern of many other early 1960's TV crime shows. The acting here is first-rate, however, and the three leads (especially James Caan) went on to bigger and better things.

After the proceedings, Hitchcock informs the audience about the seriousness of the problem they've just witnessed and he dispenses with the usual wry commentary.

One step from hell

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 13 January 2012]

***SPOILERS*** Going undercover as gang banger Phil Beldone writer Jay Shaw, James Caan, infiltrates one of the most dangerous street gangs in New York City Brooklyn's notorious Red Hook Barons. The Barons at first are a bit suspicious,thinking he's an undercover cop, of Phil in his coming from almost out of nowhere to join their gang. Still the gang leader Tiger, Walter Koenig, seems to have a soft spot for Phil in his willing to do anything, through the gang's dangerous initiation process, to join the gang.

While all this is going on Phil writes everything he could find out about the gang in an upcoming book he planing to have published about it. Including those in it like Tiger and his two top lieutenants Candle & Fish, Tony Musante & Zalman King, who don't trust Phil one bit. It's later that both Candle and Fish's suspicions about Phil are confirmed when he balks in beating and old drunk, Leonard P. Geer, sleeping in Prospect Park to death as part of his being initiated into the Barons.

Breaking into Phil's flea bag and roach infested $7.00 a week apartment in Red Hook Fish & Candle uncover his notes on the gang as well as themselves. The worst is what Phil wrote about his friend Tiger who he claimed to be a closet gay who's super macho, in being a big time ladies man, image is just a cover for his inadequacies and fear of women! Just as Phil is about to get it by being sent out as point-man, or a sacrificial lamb, in a rumble with the rival Flyers things suddenly turn in his favor. Not because of anything smart on Phil's part but the total stupidity,fueled by heavy drug use and drinking alcohol, of those, the Barron leadership, who plan to murder him; by letting the rival Fyers do it from them!

***SPOILERS*** Tragic ending with Phil's gang hand picked girlfriend Filine, Lynn Loring, risking her life by sticking by him who ends up getting stuck with a switchblade knife and killed by Candle as he tried to run in Phil with it. Phil for his part realizes that he was playing with fire in trying to get a story about New York or Brooklyn street gangs first hand only to end up almost getting killed himself! And then when he was just about to call it, his involvement with the Barons, quites having someone who loved him, Filine, get killed in his place!

Doesn't Stand the Test of Time

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 26 May 2023]

Nothing seems dated like the slang expressions of young people. The juvenile delinquent was a romantic character in cinema. Marlon Brando and his motorcycle gang were front and center. Here James Caan, an aspiring writer, joins a street gang in order to gather research to write a novel. He immediately crosses on psychotic but gains the interest of "Tiger," played by Walter Koenig (Chekov on Star Trek). The whole gang seems sort of silly. Too organized. Caan is put through an initiation package but is discovered when there is a breaking at his apartment by one of the guys. The story has a rather sad ending, showing that you don't have to embed to get enough information.

"You're funny. Like old."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 6 January 2023]

It was standard during the era to use older actors to portray teenagers, so watching today, the idea that James Caan at twenty-four, Zalman King at twenty-two, and both Tony Musante and Walter Koenig at twenty-eight might have been involved in a Brooklyn street gang doesn't quite ring true. Only Lynn Loring at twenty would have been suitable as a hanger on past her teen years, but even then, she looked older than her actual age. One might also question the casting for the episode. The clean-cut Koenig certainly didn't look the part of a brutal gang leader, Musante would have been the better choice, but then the chemistry for the story wouldn't have worked.

One thing for sure though, if James Caan didn't get a boost for his Hollywood good looks here, I'd be surprised. He fit right in with the Newman/Redford crowd. As Jay Shaw, using the alias Phil Beldon, Caan's character was a would-be writer hoping to gain a sense of realism about urban street gangs by becoming a member of the Barons in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Met with disapproval at first, Shaw ingratiates himself with the Baron's leader Tiger (Koenig), making inroads into the group until he's found out by Candle (Musante) and Fish (King) when they ransack his apartment. A developing relationship with Loring's Filene also hits the skids when the stuff he's written up as notes for his book are read at the gang's hangout.

Though you'd think that Tiger would give the okay to his henchmen to give Shaw a good working over, he instead decides to have Shaw be a point man in a street fight with rival gang the Flyers. That would have insured Shaw's brutal demise, but Shaw, relying on his wits, uses a passing vehicle to escape as the police make the scene to scatter the hoods. Though taken into custody for a brief period, Shaw's released on bail posted by Filene, only to find himself in the crosshairs again between Tiger and Candle. With Tiger's knife drawn ready to stab Shaw, Filene is accidentally shoved against it to end her life in a poignant and sorrowful end to the tragic tale.

As was his custom following these public service-oriented programs, Hitchcock refrains from his usual humorous closing remarks to sound a warning on the problem of juvenile delinquency. His program here was offered in the same vein as movies like "The Wild One" and "Rebel Without a Cause", though judging by where we are today with urban violence, the message has obviously been disregarded.

Early James Caan and Walter Koenig Efforts

[djclearie · 5/10 · 6 August 2017]

At the time this episode was produced it was almost mandatory to have a delinquent teen entry. Brando's 'The Wild One', James Dean's 'Rebel Without a Cause' and countless other lower budget hell-raiser flicks paved the way. The dialogue is a bit stilted, true, but it's what people expected at that time from this type of drama. There is some respectable jazz as background music. Caan and Koenig exhibit their early acting chops. That alone is interesting to see. By today's standards, these 'delinquents' look like Eagle Scouts.

Hokey

[dougdoepke · 15 February 2017]

Wanting to gather authentic material for a book, a wannabe writer joins a Brooklyn street gang undercover.

Looks like I'm a minority, but I found the entry hokey as heck. The well-scrubbed cast, by and large, looks like they just stepped out of studio make-up. Only Candle (Musante) manages a degree of gang boy grit, while Caan looks about ten years to old for a delinquent. To me, the only interesting feature is Shaw's (Caan) innuendo that the gang chieftain, Tiger(!), may be gay. Now that's a real departure for the period.

Note how the script both finesses censorship and preserves Shaw's upright morality by implying no sex between him and Filene (Loring). But then this so-called gang girl looks and acts like a perfectly innocent virgin. That may help the ending, but further compromises the premise. Remember, this is supposed to be the toughest neighborhood in Brooklyn. Now, maybe I'm a fuss-budget, but the gang's calling their girls "Debs" sounds like a sorority instead of something more street-wise. Then too, the girls stand around like wallflowers waiting to dance. The ending, however, aptly dramatizes what the production was trying to get at. Too bad, the remainder is too airbrushed to equal the upshot.

Anyway, juvenile delinquency was a popular screen topic for about a ten-year period. For sheer grit, Blackboard Jungle (1955) shows how it could be done. I guess Hitch's show wanted to make a contribution to social betterment. But, looks to me like the series should stick to what it does best, namely, dark rooms and white-knuckle suspense.

Pure Drek From Start to Finish

[mbrahms26 · 1/10 · 25 August 2020]

I was 13 years old when I first saw this episode when it first aired in 1964. My family actually resided in Red Hook, Brooklyn at the time, and we laughed at the distorted depiction of the neighborhood as a crime ridden hell hole. It was in fact a very safe area, mostly Italian-American, with pockets of Irish and Norwegian Americans. There were no muggings, rapes, robberies or murders that I recall. There were gangs, but nothing like the homicidal Barons in the episode. If you didn't bother them, they didn't bother you. They basically just hung out, and were much younger than the actors in the Barons. This is the pleasant neighborhood where "Moonstruck" took place. It became gentrified in the 1970's due to its low crime rate and is now in two sections known as Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. As for the episode, the acting is laughable and the plot so ridiculous it defies belief. No explanation was provided as to why the police allowed the Barons to terrorize the neighborhood or how these twenty somethings earned a living. Plot contrivances and silly dialogue abound. I am amazed no one yelled out "Hey, Daddy-o!"