Alfred Hitchcock, “Frenzy” (1972)
Coming at the tail-end of the UK film director’s illustrious career, “Frenzy” is a straightforward murder thriller set in London in the early 1970s. On second thoughts, maybe it was straightforward only for Hitchcock, not his audience: the film carries familiar Hitchcock devices such as the idea of an innocent man being accused of crime or some other deed and being pursued or arrested by authorities while the real perpetrator is at large still, and the killer possibly has a strange relationship with his mother. Scenes of straight-out sadism and sexual violence with references to serial killer psychology are balanced by comedy, farce and graveyard humour. For all that though, “Frenzy” feels like just a walk in the park for Hitchcock for this viewer, partly because of its scaled-down focus on ordinary working people in London, and partly because while it repeats several of Hitchcock’s favourite motifs it doesn’t do much new with them. Neither does it demonstrate or suggest anything that might indicate a new creative direction for the film-making legend.
Former pilot Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) finds himself at the centre of a police hunt after his ex-wife Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) and new squeeze Babs (Anna Massey) are found dead on separate occasions, both of them having been killed by a serial rapist / killer nicknamed the Necktie Murderer who has been terrorising the women of London for some time. Blaney seeks help from a friend, a vegetable seller called Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), who gives him shelter but betrays him to the police. Despite Blaney’s protestations of innocence, the police promptly press charges and hustle him quickly through a court and Blaney ends up in jail. In the meantime a good-natured police inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen) realises that Blaney may be innocent after he comes across evidence linking Rusk to Babs’s murder. He is later informed that Blaney has escaped from prison and realises the man may be heading to Rusk’s apartment to avenge the deaths of his ex-wife and girlfriend.
As audiences learn the identity of the Necktie Murderer within the film’s first half-hour, “Frenzy” turns its focus onto aspects of Blaney’s character, background and behaviour and various coincidences that suggest to others that he’s the most likely person to be the murderer. Blaney’s been down on his luck lately, having been sacked from work and is in need of money; he’s impulsive, hot-tempered, self-centred and is capable of violent acts. He nurses grudges and doesn’t ingratiate himself with others. Rusk on the other hand is charming, cheerful and friendly, devoted to his mum, and well-liked by everyone who knows him. Spot the killer yet? The subtext is that old cliche that we can’t judge books by their covers and that Blaney and Rusk can be seen as each other’s twin as it were. As the two pals who are as different from each other as night is from day, Finch and Foster are very credible though one has the impression that the bad boy with a heart of gold and the good boy with a hidden and horrifying secret were not difficult stereotypes for them to play.
Oxford as a main character comes late in the movie and his appeal comes mainly from his intelligence and conciliatory nature, and his droll relationship with his wife (Vivien Merchant) who is learning high-class French cuisine and insists on feeding hubby her often inedible and tasteless results. The dinner-table moments provide ample opportunities for macabre slapstick humour as Oxford and the missus discuss aspects of the murder case – in one scene Oxford describes how the Necktie Murderer broke a victim’s fingers while his wife snaps breadsticks, as if in imitation – though after a couple of scenes like this, the humour becomes stale and something else that’s funny is needed. The most hilarious section in “Frenzy” involves Rusk, having dumped a victim in a potato truck, trying to salvage his necktie pin and having to hide among the sacks when the truck starts travelling to a depot; with the victim’s whole body stiff from rigor mortis, he gets kicked in the face constantly by her foot.
The film is peppered with various witty remarks, visual jokes and other utterances and scenes that have double or opposite meanings in the movie’s context: initially amusing, they can become a tired cliche in themselves as the movie progresses. One of the funniest jokes is the appearance of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s famous painting “The Chinese Girl” hanging in Rusk’s apartment: the painting in itself is merely kitsch but appearing in a serial killer’s abode, well, the girl’s green skin can only mean one thing … the guy likes his girls dead!
The support cast hold their side up well and if anything are more important as a group than the three lead actors, as they flesh out lead character Blaney’s background and character and make plausible the possibility of his being the serial killer so their acting and their character details, however minor, are crucial. Brenda’s secretary (Jean Marsh) not only looks like a narrow-minded, holier-than-thou puritan, she is one in the way she speaks to Oxford about Rusk pestering her boss. The fact that Brenda, despite being divorced and employing a spinster stereotype as her assistant, runs a dating agency that might attract sleazy types is a droll detail but is important nevertheless: it brings the serial killer to her.
As expected, the camerawork is impeccable and a significant actor in its own right, panning away from Rusk as he takes Babs to his apartment and floating down the stairs (staircases are major fixtures in Hitchcock films) and out into the streets like a lonely waif while he does what he has to do. Much later as Blaney goes up the stairs seeking revenge, the camera tracks him closely and eagerly, following his hand as it slides up the support rail, emphasising the two men as polar yet complementary opposites. The whole film looks colourful in the way that Hitchcock’s films for Hollywood in the 1950s were vividly coloured. Even the musical soundtrack for “Frenzy” sounds 1950s with its smooth orchestral backing and quite melodramatic tunes and is perhaps the most dated aspect of the film.
Food is a major motif in “Frenzy” but it’s a pity Hitchcock doesn’t connect it very closely to consumption, sex and death. The rapist “consumes” his victims and tosses them out like so much trash: this could have been connected to Rusk’s work as a vegetable seller in some way. Images of abandoned vegetables and fruit that look rotten outside but are still fresh inside could have been used to reinforce the film’s message about how superficial knowledge of a person and circumstantial evidence can be used and manipulated into condemning innocent people who may be alienated from society in some way. Food could also have been used to illustrate and explore Rusk’s relationship with his mother, and give audiences some insight into how he became a violent misogynist.
Not a bad film for a director in the twilight of his career but for some viewers it’ll be hard to shake off the impression that in “Frenzy”, Hitchcock is simply re-running his favourite ideas and not milking them for new insights into people’s motivations and behaviour.