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Bwind22 : You are in the year 1968. George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead looms in the horizon, and the 60s have already produced some memorable Hitchcock classics and several other wonderful horror flicks. You are a budding script writer, and get a call from Hitchcock for a possible script idea. What idea do you pitch to him, and what will your script be of?
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Even without an answer to how the looming Night of the Living Dead is relevant to the question, I'll go first since everyone else in my group is too timid. ;)
I'd pitch Sir Alfred Hitchcock one of my favorite stories from Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado", for a couple of different reasons. First and foremost, Poe's work is all public domain so the studio wouldn't have to worry about getting the rights to it. Secondly, adaptations of Poe's work have already proven popular in that decade with "The Pit and The Pendulum", "The (Fall of the) House of Usher", "The Raven" and "The Black Cat" all seeing big screen releases. Third, anyone familiar with the story is aware that it's a tension-filled revenge tale, which I believe plays to Hitchcock's strong suit as the master of suspense.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, it goes like this... Fortunato, a wine afficianado, is lured into the basement of his friend, Montresor's (who is also the Narrator) basement with the expectation of finding a Cask of Amontillado (an expensive red wine) awaiting him. Once in the basement, Montresor dupes his intoxicated friend, chains him in a side cellar, then seals up the wall in front of the door, effectively burying his old friend alive inside a tomb in his own basement. As the story winds down, we learn through the narration that it's been 50 years since this event occured. Forutnato's body is still in the basement, sealed behind the wall and Montresor was never caught or punished for the crime. Obviously, that's just the paraphrased version. Secondary characters and subplots would be inserted in order to expand the short story to feature length.
I envision the role of Montresor being played by the great Vincent Price, who's obviously a fan of Poe's work and starred in three of the four films mentioned above. Ideal casting for the role of Fortunato would be Boris Karloff, although knowing what we know now, he may not have completed the film before he died in 1969 so perhaps Bela Lugosi would be the wiser choice, with hindsight being 20/20.
A story by Edgar Allan Poe, scripted by bwind22, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock and starring Vincent Price and Boris Karloff (or Bela Lugosi) would almost certainly have been a box office success in it's time and would more than likely still be considered one of the classic films of that era to this day.