And There’s the Hitch

Acclaimed 20th-century film director Alfred Hitchcock plotted many a murder for the silver screen, but was he himself a killer? That’s the question to be asked in a forthcoming film titled Number 13. According to blogger and Shots editor Mike Stotter, the story will be set in 1922, when Hitch was making his own flick called Number 13, “a rare film in that he did not complete it.” (In fact, all footage from that movie has reportedly been lost.) Of the film still in the works, Stotter explains:

First-time feature filmmaker Chase Palmer, who also penned the script, gathers an impressive cast including Dan Fogler, Ewan McGregor, Ben Kingsley, and Emily Mortimer for this fictional thriller about a torrid murder mystery in which the prime suspect is director Alfred Hitchcock (Fogler).

As Hitchcock struggles to keep the production on his latest film, “Number Thirteen,” afloat, he becomes inexorably involved in a love triangle involving two key crew members. When the male lead of the film turns up dead and the editor suspects that the director was involved in the murder, the race is on to solve the crime before the killer can strike again.

Palmer’s Number 13 is scheduled to begin filming next month, with a release date in 2008.

It’s a wonder that Hitchcock, who liked to make cameo appearances in his own films, has not been portrayed by actors in other movies since he died 1980. However, he has appeared in a detective’s role in at least one novel that I know of: The Vertigo Murders, by J. Madison Davis (2000).