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| The tubular central image of this poster for Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy seems to call our attention to his earlier masterpiece Vertigo's (1958) iconic poster |
London women fall victim at an alarming rate to a mysterious, perverted serial killer, who strangles them with his ties. Overwhelming evidence which the police obtain points to a man who, nevertheless, is innocent.
Frenzy is the penultimate film from English master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock (North by Northwest (1959)). It is written by Anthony Shaffer (Death on the Nile (1978)), based on the 1966 novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Arthur La Bern. It can be taken as a kind of Jack the Ripper effort about an urban serial killer of women of Hitchcock's, transported to a modern setting.
The film is ripe with little holes and jumps markedly between rather brutal scenes of rape and strangulation and scenes that showcase Hitch's keenly morbid sense of humor, and which are often funny and very precious. But also besides this pleasant feature to the film, its story is very unpredictable, and the ending is really great.
I love Frenzy. It is transgressive, fun, frightening and so London. The performances are great, SPOILER but the two that especially stand out are naturally Jon Finch (The Standard (1977)) as 'wrong man' Blaney and Barry Foster (Ryan's Daughter (1970)), chillingly realistic as the chummy sex killer Rusk.
Related posts:
Alfred Hitchcock: The Birds (1963) - Hitchcock spearheads horror sub-genre and innovative special effects in great, odd film
Dial M for Murder (1954) - Hitchcock's 3D thriller is hindered by theatrics
The 39 Steps (1935) or, Murder and High Jinx!
Watch a making-of featurette from the film's DVD here
Cost: Reportedly between 2-3.5 mil. $
Box office: Reportedly 12.6 mil. $
= At least a big hit, possibly a huge hit
[Frenzy premiered 19 May (Cannes Film Festival) and runs 116 minutes. Frenzy is the third and last film Hitchcock made in his native England after his relocation to the US in 1939. The previous two were Under Capricorn (1949) and Stage Fright (1950). He asked Barry Foster (Three Kinds of Heat (1987)) to read about real-life sadist psycho killer Neville Heath in preparation for his performance. Heath was hanged for killing two women in 1946. Filming took place in London and at the Pinewood Studios in England from August - October 1971. Hitchcock was the son of a Covent Garden merchant and wanted to capture the market as he remembered it from his childhood in Frenzy. His wife Alma Hitchcock suffered a stroke during filming, which forced him away from shooting in some instances. Frenzy is the first Hitchcock film to feature nudity. Henry Mancini was hired to score the film, but Hitchcock was unhappy with Mancini's work, accusing him of ripping off Bernard Herrmann, (who famously scored Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and 6 other Hitchcock movies), refusing to pay him a nickle for his trouble, and hired Ron Goodwin (Spanish Fly (1976)) instead, - a hard blow for Mancini. Frenzy made 4.8 mil. $ (38.1 % of the total gross) in North America. If the 12.6 mil. $ world gross is accurate, it did extraordinarily good business internationally, - likely especially in the UK and mainland Europe. The film was nominated for 4 Golden Globes and won National Board of Review's Top Ten Films award. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch better than this review. Hitchcock returned with Family Plot (1976). Frenzy is fresh at 87 % with a 7.5/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Frenzy?
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