"I am out to give the public good, healthy, mental shake-ups," the late great film director Alfred Hitchcock once said back in 1936. The quote is taken from Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews, a collection of interviews, essays, and speeches edited by Sidney Gottlieb. The director continued, "Civilization has become so screening and sheltering that we cannot experience sufficient thrills at first hand. Therefore, to prevent our becoming sluggish and jellified, we have to experience them artificially, and the screen is the best medium for this." This was a vision he would maintain throughout his life. That Hitchcock, who was sometimes simply called "Hitch" for short, was an accomplished and highly influential director of thrillers is beyond question, even among his most stalwart critics. Years after his death in 1980, his name is still familiar to young and old as the creative hand behind such films as Psycho...