Frenzy [Old Version]

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After making several so-so pictures in the mid to late sixties, director Alfred Hitchcock was back in vintage form with 1972´s "Frenzy," his second-to-last movie.

Based on the novel "Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square" by Arthur La Bern, with a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer ("Sleuth"), "Frenzy" is familiar Hitchcock territory with an innocent man accused of a crime he didn´t commit, trying to work out his own rescue. Hitchcock had been there before in films like "The 39 Steps," "The Wrong Man," and "North By Northwest," so he knew what he was after. What´s more, the director returned to England to film the project, something his British fans had wanted him to do for a long time, Hitchcock having made his move to Hollywood as far back as the late thirties.

Then, to a story already laced with brutal murder, the director adds touches of typical Hitchcockian black humor. It´s a delicious mix. Everyone´s career must come to an end, but we can be grateful that Hitchcock went out in style. As usual, the folks at Universal append a most enlightening documentary and several other worthwhile goodies to the DVD, making a product no Hitchcock fancier should be without.

The movie begins with an aerial shot of London, what seems almost like travelogue footage, while composer Ron Goodwin´s musical track plays a theme of typically English pomp and circumstance, reminding one of Elgar and the former glories of the Empire. Then we close in on a Member of Parliament addressing a crowd on the banks of the Thames, speaking of the government´s efforts to clean up the environment. "Pollution will be banished from these rivers," he says, as the naked body of a young, murdered woman washes ashore a few feet away. She has been strangled, another victim of a serial killer known only as the "necktie murderer." In the trailers, Hitch himself would be seen floating belly up in the water. The combination of the macabre and the humorous was irresistible to the old man, even in this late stage of his work; and given that his last film, "Family Plot," was even more lighthearted about crime, it was undoubtedly a predilection he would have continued.

Anyway, we next meet the characters of the drama. The first is erstwhile Squadron Leader Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), flying ace, now divorced, broke, down on his luck, and just about to lose his latest job, as a bartender. Almost simultaneously we meet his friend, Robert Rusk (Barry Foster), a prosperous produce merchant with a penchant for fancy clothes. For the first twenty minutes or so, we are led to believe that Blaney must be committing the murders, as the camera follows him on a round of suspicious activities. But early on we find out the truth. It´s Rusk, who is seen viciously raping and strangling Blaney´s ex-wife (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) in her office in a sequence almost as grisly and shocking as the shower scene in "Psycho." The difference? Well, the blood, of course, the lack of which makes the newer ordeal seem slightly less ghastly, yet we feel more sympathetic toward the ex-wife for her pitiful, trembling prayer while dying. In both cases Hitchcock uses a closing shot of the victims that remains grotesquely in memory.

Since Blaney is seen leaving his ex-wife´s office building, he is the natural suspect, and subsequently more circumstantial evidence mounts up against him. Take a good look at Finch, too. It´s no mere coincidence that he bears a striking resemblance to Robert Donat in "The 39 Steps." The Chief Inspector hot on Blaney´s trail is played by Alec McCowan, whom you may remember from "Travels With My Aunt." He is having as much trouble dealing with his wife´s new interest in gourmet cooking than in the solving the case. The juxtaposition of his trying to avoid eating his wife´s repulsive concoctions and his trying to bring the "Necktie Murderer" to justice is wonderfully sly.

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