Hitchcock's been kidnapped!

We had a Halloween party with an Alfred Hitchcock theme Saturday night. Larry and I had to do some last minute rushing around and I was a little nervous about how things would go, but it all turned out well. We assigned a couple from one of Hitchcock’s movies to each couple invited to dress up like in costume. Along with their costume, they could bring one item and a clue to who their character was. We have such a fun group of friends who went all out. Here they are by movie:

Rebecca

Notorious

To catch a Thief

The man who knew too much

North by Northwest

The Birds

Vertigo

Dial “M” for Murder

Rear Window (our best costume winners)

And somehow I missed getting a picture of Reba and Chris dressed as characters from Spellbound. I’ll have to get a picture from one of my friends to post later.

Once everyone arrived we had them mingle and match each couple’s costumes with their movie and character names. Three couples got every single one correct, which impressed me. After that we all had dinner (special thanks to those who helped, especially Katherine who helped me plan the meal and brought baked spaghetti). Once everyone was full, we split the groups into teams and sent them on an adventure around our neighborhood.

We gave each team a small notebook, a flashlight, and pictures of three homes in our neighborhood (with the addresses removed of course). We told them that Hitchcock had been kidnapped and they were assembled because they worked with him and knew him best. The pictures were the homes of three informants in the neighborhood. At each home they would have to do an activity to get a clue about Hitchcock’s kidnapper. The first team back to our house who knew who the kidnapper was, won the game.

The trickiest part was finding the homes in the dark since so many homes in our neighborhood have the same floorplan. We left a Hitchcock symbol on the back of their mailboxes with directions that couldn’t be seen from the street, but once a team guessed the right house they would know if they were in the right spot. One backyard had a message that said something like, “In the backyard you will find a pair of binoculars, use them to spy on the neighbors to find your next clue. Just be careful not to get caught spying like they are in Rear Window” So the teams had to find the binoculars and then we had some battery operated candles in our backyard lighting a message that said, “former member of Resistance” and you could just see into our backyard.

The next home had a message that said, “I hope that you’re not afraid of The Birds because you need to find them in this yard and use the letters on them to fill in the following message.” Then in the backyard we hung origami birds all over a tree. Some of them had letters on them that they had to use to unscramble the message, “You’re looking for a man.”

The message at the last home said, “Answer the following questions to get a phone number, then call that number to get your next clue. Just hope you have more success calling for help than Margot did in Dial “M” for Murder.” Then there were a bunch of questions about things around the house and the yard with numbers for answers and when they called the phone number, they got the massage, “This is not the first time this person has stolen.”

These clues hinted to the fact that Larry, AKA John Robie the Cat burgler, kidnapped Hitchcock. When the teams got back to our house with their accusations Larry was dressed as a thief. I was worried about how the game would go, but everyone ended up back at about the same time and they figured it out. He had hot cider waiting since it was so cold outside and then we played a Hitchcock version of Scene It that Larry and I made up using Hitchcock trivia and movie clips. Everything turned out so well, the thing that really made it fun was that our friends were such fun participants.