Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series) The Children of Alda Nuova (1962) User Reviews

What goes around comes around

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 4 November 2012]

***SPOILERS*** It's when American tourist Frankie Fane,Jack Carson, meets in a Rome café fellow American and archeology post grad student Anisley Crowder, Christopher Dark, that he starts to feel a bit at ease. It's that Fane seems to be somewhat of a man on the run with him always looking over his shoulder as if the police were after him. But when he meets Crowder his total attitude changes abruptly. Told to chill out and see the sights of the city and its surrounding area Crowder suggests to Fane this place on the outskirts of Rome called Alda Nuova that he might find very interesting.

What Crowder didn't realize is that Fane is a wanted man back home in the USA for unspeakable crimes that he committed there and it's in the little out of the way Italian town of Alda Nuova that ultimate and final justice is there waiting for him! And when Fane does take a trip to the town the trap that his crimes set him up for is there waiting from him. In that of it's rag tag children, all homeless and hunger and without any hope from the future, that's a direct result of the crimes that he committed!

**SPOILERS*** The usual mostly nice guy Jack Carson plays here against type and does a pretty job at it too. He's been on the run from the law in the US for months and finally in far off Italy he feels that he finally escaped it. But in the end it wasn't the law that caught up with him. It was his victims that did!

A 'turista' runs into bad luck

[classicsoncall · 5/10 · 10 April 2022]

The title is a bit of a misnomer. The 'children' in the episode ranged from early teen to young adult, and every one of them had a dirty face. If I were a foreigner like Frankie Fane (Jack Carson) in an unfamiliar place, I would have high tailed it out of Alda Nuova at the first sight of a guy like Paolo (Thano Rama). Accosted for cigarettes and money he accidentally knocks Paolo out while trying to defend himself. At that point, the village mob beats the hell out of him and disposes of the body (off screen). An investigator notes the new shoes on all the young hoodlums but can glean no information from them. In a story that does nothing to connect the dots, it turns out Fane was a drug dealer on the lam from the States. So apparently, it's made to seem like he was getting some form of retributive justice by getting taken down, but there's no way any of the Alda citizens would have known that. It's a muddle of a story that rightly gets panned by almost every other reviewer here, so on that score, you can add me to the bunch.

Confused Meandering Script

[Hitchcoc · 3/10 · 5 June 2021]

Very little to review. The story is missing a bunch of development. We are not engaged in the story and the characters don't seem to have any real motivations. Only that a bad guy should get his.

I don't get it

[nsavage3-1 · 2/10 · 15 March 2012]

I've seen a great many episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", but I had not seen this particular episode until recently. I found it disappointing, to say the least.

Spoiler alert.....

An American tourist visits a rural town in Rome and runs into a bunch of weird teenage "hooligans". One of them speaks English. They lure the American to an old cemetery and attack him.

In the closing segment, an investigator is sent to look for the American, who is now missing. He mentions that the missing American was a drug dealer who sells to minors. I guess that was the "twist" in the story.

But questions remained- Why were the teenagers after him? Robbery wasn't the motive (he had already thrown all his money to them). At one point, much emphasis is put on a hole that is like a bottomless pit, but its never mentioned again (I guess we are to assume the man's body was thrown there maybe). If he was a big drug dealer, why was he so interested in this rural town and its history in the first place?? And so on and so forth.

A weak episode at best.

You have to pay attention

[talonjensen · 3/10 · 14 May 2018]

The set is poorly done, the acting a little below average for many of the characters and no real twist at the end, so I was a little disappointed in this episode. I also didn't feel the conflict or tension building to a resolution.

This episode is titled "The Children of Alda Nuova", but, as is stated at the end, it is about "high school children".

I know that these short episodes are sometimes a challenge, but this one is all about karma or someone getting what they deserve. This theme has been done much better in other episodes and other shows. If I were teaching film students I would use it as an example of what not to do.

Weird, awkward episode

[samgslp · 3/10 · 12 April 2011]

This episode begins with an American ordering a drink (or at least trying to) at a café in Italy. A nearby patron helps our unlikeable protagonist order correctly and subsequently reveals himself to be an intellectual American, aware of many obscure sites that the average tourist would never know of. So the unruly American travels to Alda Nuova for a good time. Unfortunately, there are no good times to be had for the viewer of this episode, for it is dry, confusing, and poorly edited. Ancient Italy serves as a nice idea for a setting, but the sets used for this episode do little to create the illusion of grand antiquity.

The lead actor performs quite well in his role, but it doesn't make up for the lack of organization in the story. Increasingly negative and tense situations arise, but it doesn't do anything to pique the viewer's interest, as the American character is a goon and the Italian children look like a bunch of college students with dirt on their faces. Leading up to the end, you have a feeling that some kind of twist is likely to occur, but quite frankly, it doesn't really matter. Overall, this is a very poor episode and one of the worst installments of season 7.

A head scratcher

[collings500 · 1/10 · 16 March 2019]

Logic tells us that if there is a "best" episode, there must be a "worst" as well, and this one is it. Illogical, nonsensical, poorly acted, poorly edited, and just plain dumb, one wonders why this one ever got the green light to go into production.

Another really weak episode--good one to skip

[FlushingCaps · 3/10 · 28 March 2021]

At a cafe in Rome, Frankie Fane is impatient with a waiter who brought him wine when he ordered bourbon. He seems to have trouble comprehending that the waiter doesn't speak English. An American gentleman at the next table helps him out, because he has been in Italy for some time and has learned much Italian. The two get to talking.

We immediately see that Frankie is a crass, somewhat rude, unlikeable man. The other man helps him anyhow, suggesting places Frankie can visit to make his trip more pleasant-several places good for a day trip in a rented car. One is Alda Nuova, which is where we see Frankie pulling into a couple of minutes later.

There he encounters some untalkative adults, and one teenager who speaks English. Suddenly, a couple of dozen other rough-looking teens appear, fixated on Frankie, who is panicked because they aren't talking, just clustering near him.

He takes the one kid who speaks and three of his friends, as the others are all trying to get into his car, and drives to the old city nearby, where somehow the rest of this group has followed. They look around for a bit, but Frankie can sense trouble and they block him as he tries to leave.

He is happy to give them all his money, his watch, his fancy cigarette lighter, but we leave this scene with the whole gang beating the snot out of him for no apparent reason.

Now a detective is talking to Frankie's restaurant friend, trying to find out what happened to the man. They drive to Alda Nuova and encounter the same unattractive crowd, but even though they find a turned-over wreck of a car way down a mountainside, they don't find any evidence of Frankie, so they head back.

This was to me about the most boring and uninteresting of any shows in the series. We were given reason to not like Frankie right at the beginning, we never during the film learned anything about his life other than that he's American, and his only goal in the show was to see something interesting while in Italy. Instead, the nice man he met, trying to help, but he was too keen on any ancient thing, so he steered him to a place that might have had some history, but by himself, Frankie couldn't learn anything or really experience it. And it turned out to be a dangerous place because this gang of hoodlums seem to run rampant over the place.

Maybe the message is: American cities aren't the only places with hoodlum gangs-I don't know.

I do know this was a waste of time to watch and I'd advise you to skip it if you are going through the series on DVD, or like to stay up extra late to watch it on ME-TV. I give it a 3.

Bad things happen to a jerk.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 22 April 2021]

When the story begins, you see Frankie (Jack Carson) in Italy. But instead of learning the language or appreciating anything, he acts as if he'd rather be home in the States. Soon another American strikes up a conversation with him and suggests he visits nearby Alda Antica and its beautiful ruins. However, on his way there, he stops in a small town and finds it filled with people who seem intent on doing him harm. And, considering Frankie is a jerk, it's not necessarily a big loss if they do!

I noticed that nearly all the reviews for this episode thought it was a poor or even terrible episode. After seeing it, I can understand. While it is satisfying seeing bad things happen to Frankie, it's not like there's a lot of suspense or a twist here. Weak to say the least...and including a meaningless epilogue saying the criminals were punished...which was NOT necessary and seemed to undo much of the story. An episode that provides little in the way of thrills or suspense.