Alfred Hitchcock's penultimate film,and his final British-made vehicle,FRENZY was something of a step-up from his previous effort TOPAZ,but still somewhat below his highest standards.It is also without question the most explicit and graphic film the master was to direct in his long career,and although fairly innocuous by today's standards (the profanities used would usually pass muster now in PG-orientated movies),there are a few scenes which still cause disturbing frisson's,but not always for the right reasons.
The plot,consisting of an aggressive,vindictive former military man,Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) who is jailed after being mistaken for a sex killer (including the murder of his estranged wife),but vows revenge on the real culprit,a former friend and market trader Bob Rusk (Barry Foster) has been done in scores of variations before and since,but despite the limited scope available with this story,Hitchcock still manages some of his distinctive touches,notably a beautifully filmed tracking shot travelling away from Rusk's flat as he is about to ensnare another victim,Barbara (Anna Massey),a blackly humorous and bizarre sequence involving Rusk's inept attempts at retrieving his tie-pin from Barbara's hand (now heavily in rigor mortis) on a moving truck;several minutes before he had disposed of the body by placing it in a potato sack and throwing it on to the said wagon, before realising where this incriminating piece of evidence was.There is plenty of decent light relief,mostly involving the case's investigative policeman Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen),who very reluctantly has to endure his wife's awful endeavours at gourmet cooking while gradually realising that Rusk is the real murderer,not the now incarcerated Blaney.
As has been noted,the most contentious sequence in FRENZY is the rape/strangulation murder,involving Rusk and Mrs.Blaney (Barbara Leigh-Hunt).Despite undeniable technical excellence and effective direction,I have always felt extremely uneasy about this scene,which is certainly the most graphic and brutal in a Hitchcock film,even compared to Janet Leigh's famous shower in PSYCHO and Paul Newman's brutal disposal of Wolfgang Kieling in a farmhouse kitchen in TORN CURTAIN.The rape and strangulation in FRENZY is properly shocking but also veers into being gratuitously nasty and voyeuristic.There was similar controversy the previous year with Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS, when Susan George was raped in identical gross detail.At least she managed to survive that horrific ordeal;Hitchcock here doesn't give the character of Mrs.Blaney that privilege,and the legendary director lingers on the final act of strangulation and killing rather too much and too unpleasantly,ending with a brief and gruesome freeze frame of Barbara Leigh-Hunt's tongue sticking out in harrowing detail.The unsettling nature of the sequence is made all the more disconcerting as Mrs.Blaney had easily been the most sympathetic of the characters we had seen in the film to that point.Miss Leigh-Hunt's fine performance as a decent,gentle-minded and good-natured woman trapped by terrible circumstance,first in a doomed marriage to a boozy,abrasive,bad-tempered army type,and secondly dying in the most horrid way imaginable make us feel deeply for her character.It is also interesting to note that in a documentary interview he gave about the filming of this sequence,Barry Foster himself duly admitted to feeling decidedly uncomfortable while enacting it all.
Most of the other cast come off well too,with a fine turn by Alec McCowen as the senior copper Oxford,effectively serious in his detection mode but amusingly sardonic when having to observe the inedible cuisinal non-delights concocted by his wife,also well played by Vivien Merchant.Barry Foster is chillingly convincing and plausible as the evil and depraved sex killer Rusk.Superficially he is very charming,well dressed and witty,until his sadistic and wicked nature is revealed.Hitch perhaps intentionally provides irony here,as the true villain played by Foster is in someways far more personable and likable than the innocent man accused of his killings,Jon Finch.Finch's performance as Blaney is so relentlessly unsympathetic and boorish that we never really care what fate has in store for him,even though it is clear early on that he isn't capable of such degenerate acts.As stated,this may have been intended as irony on Hitchcock's part,but the film becomes unbalanced as a result and we are confused as to who he really sees as the hero of FRENZY.Other reliable British performers such as Anna Massey,Billie Whitelaw,Clive Swift,Bernard Cribbins and Jean Marsh are adequate but again not especially sympathetic characters;the only truly personable character on show (as played by Barbara Leigh-Hunt) is as already specified,viciously slayed early on.
The lack of any congenial characters in FRENZY is a considerable negative point,as is the venomously depicted rape and murder scene to a slightly lesser extent.The film's overall quality would not have suffered had Hitchcock elected to expel this sequence from the script or editing room.Because of this,FRENZY does not tend to linger pleasantly in the memory as classics like NORTH BY NORTHWEST and REAR WINDOW,or even his darker,more Gothic efforts like PSYCHO and THE BIRDS.On the other hand,we can be grateful that Hitch's genius,even when still not operating at 100%,can still produce some striking visual and aural moments,and deft handling of humorous interludes.FRENZY is still generally efficient Hitchcock in spite of it's numerous blemishes.
RATING:6 and a Half out of 10.
The plot,consisting of an aggressive,vindictive former military man,Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) who is jailed after being mistaken for a sex killer (including the murder of his estranged wife),but vows revenge on the real culprit,a former friend and market trader Bob Rusk (Barry Foster) has been done in scores of variations before and since,but despite the limited scope available with this story,Hitchcock still manages some of his distinctive touches,notably a beautifully filmed tracking shot travelling away from Rusk's flat as he is about to ensnare another victim,Barbara (Anna Massey),a blackly humorous and bizarre sequence involving Rusk's inept attempts at retrieving his tie-pin from Barbara's hand (now heavily in rigor mortis) on a moving truck;several minutes before he had disposed of the body by placing it in a potato sack and throwing it on to the said wagon, before realising where this incriminating piece of evidence was.There is plenty of decent light relief,mostly involving the case's investigative policeman Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen),who very reluctantly has to endure his wife's awful endeavours at gourmet cooking while gradually realising that Rusk is the real murderer,not the now incarcerated Blaney.
As has been noted,the most contentious sequence in FRENZY is the rape/strangulation murder,involving Rusk and Mrs.Blaney (Barbara Leigh-Hunt).Despite undeniable technical excellence and effective direction,I have always felt extremely uneasy about this scene,which is certainly the most graphic and brutal in a Hitchcock film,even compared to Janet Leigh's famous shower in PSYCHO and Paul Newman's brutal disposal of Wolfgang Kieling in a farmhouse kitchen in TORN CURTAIN.The rape and strangulation in FRENZY is properly shocking but also veers into being gratuitously nasty and voyeuristic.There was similar controversy the previous year with Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS, when Susan George was raped in identical gross detail.At least she managed to survive that horrific ordeal;Hitchcock here doesn't give the character of Mrs.Blaney that privilege,and the legendary director lingers on the final act of strangulation and killing rather too much and too unpleasantly,ending with a brief and gruesome freeze frame of Barbara Leigh-Hunt's tongue sticking out in harrowing detail.The unsettling nature of the sequence is made all the more disconcerting as Mrs.Blaney had easily been the most sympathetic of the characters we had seen in the film to that point.Miss Leigh-Hunt's fine performance as a decent,gentle-minded and good-natured woman trapped by terrible circumstance,first in a doomed marriage to a boozy,abrasive,bad-tempered army type,and secondly dying in the most horrid way imaginable make us feel deeply for her character.It is also interesting to note that in a documentary interview he gave about the filming of this sequence,Barry Foster himself duly admitted to feeling decidedly uncomfortable while enacting it all.
Most of the other cast come off well too,with a fine turn by Alec McCowen as the senior copper Oxford,effectively serious in his detection mode but amusingly sardonic when having to observe the inedible cuisinal non-delights concocted by his wife,also well played by Vivien Merchant.Barry Foster is chillingly convincing and plausible as the evil and depraved sex killer Rusk.Superficially he is very charming,well dressed and witty,until his sadistic and wicked nature is revealed.Hitch perhaps intentionally provides irony here,as the true villain played by Foster is in someways far more personable and likable than the innocent man accused of his killings,Jon Finch.Finch's performance as Blaney is so relentlessly unsympathetic and boorish that we never really care what fate has in store for him,even though it is clear early on that he isn't capable of such degenerate acts.As stated,this may have been intended as irony on Hitchcock's part,but the film becomes unbalanced as a result and we are confused as to who he really sees as the hero of FRENZY.Other reliable British performers such as Anna Massey,Billie Whitelaw,Clive Swift,Bernard Cribbins and Jean Marsh are adequate but again not especially sympathetic characters;the only truly personable character on show (as played by Barbara Leigh-Hunt) is as already specified,viciously slayed early on.
The lack of any congenial characters in FRENZY is a considerable negative point,as is the venomously depicted rape and murder scene to a slightly lesser extent.The film's overall quality would not have suffered had Hitchcock elected to expel this sequence from the script or editing room.Because of this,FRENZY does not tend to linger pleasantly in the memory as classics like NORTH BY NORTHWEST and REAR WINDOW,or even his darker,more Gothic efforts like PSYCHO and THE BIRDS.On the other hand,we can be grateful that Hitch's genius,even when still not operating at 100%,can still produce some striking visual and aural moments,and deft handling of humorous interludes.FRENZY is still generally efficient Hitchcock in spite of it's numerous blemishes.
RATING:6 and a Half out of 10.