In this episode I revisit the Murder and a Movie format with an examination of Alfred Hitchcock's underrated 1948 film Rope, and the so-called "crime of the century" which inspired it. The murder in question was that of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924, by two affluent young men with genius-level IQs and an entirely dispassionate motive: the two young men simply wanted to prove that they were above traditional morality, and therefore, above everyone else. The murder of a child by a pair of wealthy, well-to-do white students, who claimed philosophical motives shocked the nation. The horror of the crime juxtaposed with the image of the criminals being anything but stereotypical made it all the more macabre and fascinating, inspiring works of film, theatre, and fiction, including the 1929 play Rope by Patrick Hamilton, which was performed on BBC television in 1939, and a film by the same name which was produced by none other than the master of the macabre himself, Alfred Hitchcock, in 1948. Why examine the history of this particular case and this particular movie? Because to many, this case is responsible for the trope of the “perfect crime,” one committed by self-professed geniuses just to prove that they could; a murder that was utterly dispassionate, cold, and calculated, and therefore Creeptastic!

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