Many of my students who read Media and Mayhem may never have seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. The great Farley Granger, who starred, died today at the age of 85.

See it. Now. Especially if you’ve recently found yourself feeling that your college routine has not been supplying enough tension, trembling, or terror.

Granger is joined some of the very best screen actors of the 40s and 50s, including Ruth Roman (also underappreciated), Leo G. Carroll, Pamela Hitchcock (Alfred’s daughter and a wonderfully quirky actor in her own right), and Robert Walker ( my choice, along with Mitchum, as one of the greatest of them all at playing strange, creepy, menacing characters).

I think you would also enjoy Granger in Hitchcock’s Rope.

I was about to say how versatile an actor Granger was, able to excel in roles boith charming and creepy. But that’s not quite right.

The charm and the creepiness usually came in the same character.

Dim the lights.