FOG OVER FRISCO is getting some interesting comparisons to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, most notably his film PSYCHO. While it can be said that there are some similarities with the sisters where one of them winds up on the wrong side of the tracks and the other gets the unwanted role of having to find out what happened to her, this is where similarities end. Hitchcock wanted to shock the audiences with his story and led us to believe that Janet Leigh, already an established star, would survive the story to the last reel. Yes, there was the element of money her character had taken, the same way Davis' character also gets involved in a plot to steal some securities (I think I have it right, I vaguely recall it being "money in stock form"), but in 1934 Davis was just one of many contract players wading through the mire of these quickies that Warner's was giving her. When her character meets her own fate in FOG OVER FRISCO, it's not a shock. It's actually closer to being expected: she's too crude during her short screen time and there is an uncomfortable scene at a dinner table that makes her character unlikeable.
Concealing the identity of the murderer also seems to be another point of comparison in between this movie and Hitchcock's classic. Again -- I believe this is an assumption: being a taut crime drama with a good (if clumsy) note of suspense, the need to leave the audience hanging is an old a trick as time itself. I doubt Hitchcock would have even learned about this movie since his inspiration was the book itself which was a loose account of the Ed Gein murders. If he did see this film, no one will ever know, but I personally believe Hitchcock did not use FOG OVER FRISCO even as a vague point of reference. Perhaps the fact that the movie looks different from a cinematic point of view -- it seems to be experimenting with how to transition from one scene to the next, something that only film noir, Orson Welles, and Hitchcock would engage in during the 1940s onwards. At least, it gave Margaret Lindsay a chance to carry the movie on her own since she tended to play the supporting role and would be Davis' rival in JEZEBEL.
Concealing the identity of the murderer also seems to be another point of comparison in between this movie and Hitchcock's classic. Again -- I believe this is an assumption: being a taut crime drama with a good (if clumsy) note of suspense, the need to leave the audience hanging is an old a trick as time itself. I doubt Hitchcock would have even learned about this movie since his inspiration was the book itself which was a loose account of the Ed Gein murders. If he did see this film, no one will ever know, but I personally believe Hitchcock did not use FOG OVER FRISCO even as a vague point of reference. Perhaps the fact that the movie looks different from a cinematic point of view -- it seems to be experimenting with how to transition from one scene to the next, something that only film noir, Orson Welles, and Hitchcock would engage in during the 1940s onwards. At least, it gave Margaret Lindsay a chance to carry the movie on her own since she tended to play the supporting role and would be Davis' rival in JEZEBEL.