Plot Sheer Hitchcock

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31502, 17 October 1967, Page 10

Plot Sheer Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchock, master producer of suspense films, left New Zealand last week convinced that any film shot here would have to Include sheep even to the degree of making a sheep the key in the plot. So impressed by the quantity of Sheep he saw during his holiday in New Zealand was Hitchcock that, as he awaited the departure of his jet to Suva, he formulated a plot for a mystery film. “Since you would have to use sheep you could have one marked with a secret message,” he suggested.

“Then you could have the spy running about searching for the secret sheep with the secret message, and the secret sheep could disappear among the millions of other sheep. “Surely no New Zealanders could be insomniacs. You have so many sheep to count.”

But he observed, the big mystery in New Zealand appeared to be what to do with all the wool. His remedy? “You will have to create an uncommon market.” Did anything untoward or

unusual take place on his tour? Here Mrs Hitchcock chipped in with the recQllection that her husband had felt a great urge to throw a baby into one of Rotorua’s mud pools. “They were fascinating mudpools,” Hitchcock said. “What a lovely, dirty brown. If you threw a young child in you would have a chocolate baby. “But I decided it was not really feasible because it’s much too hot. Still you could throw in someone’s visiting card and call his name mud.”