Frenzy (1972)

"Frenzy" was Hitchcock’s second to last movie. It’s his only film that was rated R (for language, violence, and nudity). It’s an uncomfortable movie to watch, plain and simple. Here’s a list of reasons why it’s uncomfortable:

1) It’s the early 70s. This was a terribly unkempt era. Hairstyles and clothing were incredibly silly-looking and odd. The hair-dos look accidental and the clothes are ill-fitting and awkward. Ugly, to be succinct.

2) Ugly people. Now, folks can say that they watch movies to “see reality” but that’s a load of junk. Hollywood movies are full of beautiful people for a reason -- people like looking at pretty people. Hitchcock knew this... it’s why he used Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, and Ingrid Bergman three times each. He was widely-known as a misogynist with an eye for the ladies. Hitchcock liked his leads to be “easy on the eyes.” As the 70s came along, he seemed to be willing to go hard on the eyes. See these photos of the three main characters in Frenzy:

I’m not sure anyone would confuse Anna Massey with Grace Kelly.  (Yes, she was supposed to be the "romantic" lead.)







3) Hitchcock seems bored. It very much feels like Hitchcock is going through the paces. By 1972, he was widely regarded as the “master of suspense,” but also as a director who knew how to balance tension with humor. In "Frenzy," he seems uninterested in carefully blurring the lines between tension and humor, instead, okay with letting two scenes (or two themes in the same scene) butt up against one another, no matter how incongruous. A prime instance: the chief New Scotland Yard inspector on the case (a London serial killer who rapes women, then strangles them with neck ties) discusses the case with his wife at home. While he’s unfolding the details, she is presenting the dinner she’s prepared: an amazingly disgusting fish stew and tiny little cooked quails. The inspector’s reactions to the meal are, indeed, humorous, but the scene feels so out of place. In older days, the scene would have been staged, directed, and played with irony. As it stands, here, it just feels like the feeble attempt of an aging director to “phone in” a gimmick which once worked. (See "Rear Window"as a wonderful example of this done well.)

4) An unlikable main character. Dick Blaney (Jon Finch) is painted as a rather unsympathetic “hero” who has (by the end of the film) only himself to save. By the end of the first act, Dick has been fired for drinking on the job (and not paying for his drinks), yelling at his (rather sweet) ex-wife, moaning about his lot, and being rude and aggressive with his girlfriend. We find out later that he’d been (perhaps) violent with his ex-wife. Granted, this is all necessary to cast a shadow of doubt on Dick’s innocence (he’s been accused of the serial murders which, in fact, his friend Bob has been committing), but it’s a tough hole to dig yourself out of. Hitch has stacked the deck against himself. I didn’t like Dick from the beginning, so (by the end) I hardly cared whether or not he went to jail.

5) A grisly and tense scene in the back of a potato truck. Bob (the killer) has realized that Babs (the latest woman he’s murdered) died with his tie-pin in her hand. So, he goes to retrieve the body, which is in a potato sack, amongst giant bags of potatoes, in the back of a truck. Bob climbs in back and tries to retrieve the pin, but the truck takes off. So there is a “humorous” scene where Bob is wrestling with a rigor mortis-ed body, breaking the finger bones to relinquish his pin. Not funny at all. In fact, it’s quite in bad taste.

6) Jon Finch. The main character (Dick) is played by Jon Finch. Finch had just finished work on Franco Zefferelli’s Macbeth, and that more than obvious. Though he’s meant to play a regular-English-joe, he comes across (diction-wise) like he’s reading couplets. The film is meant to feel, moderately, natural... Finch’s performance is anything but. (There are times it sounds like he’s reading voice-over copy for the film’s trailer, rather than his lines.)

7) The main character is all but lost for the last twenty minutes. This is sure-fire way to shoot the wheels off of a movie: remove your “hero” in the last act, and let someone else “solve the puzzle” or “right the wrongs.” Bad move. (A very different film, "Minority Report," suffered because of a similar sin.)

8) Hitchcock’s frame of mind. As stated earlier, by 1972, Hitchcock had acquired quite a reputation. And, he tried to operate out of that reputation... rather than what came about naturally. Originally, Hitchcock gained fame as a director who could create suspense masterfully (ahem). He constructed scenes and placed them adjacent to other scenes to create a commanding whole. He (for lack of a better term) manipulated his audience well. By 1972, though, Hitchcock had become a caricature of himself. He was known as a filmmaker interested in murder, the dark hearts of men, and dabbling in the grotesque (with a wink). His television show (“Alfred Hitchcock Presents”) showcased this bend. But, as films like “North by Northwest,” “Vertigo,” “Lifeboat” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” show, Hitchcock was less a showman of graphic violence than a virtuoso of expectancy and anxiety. "Frenzy" feels like a director trying to live up to the image he’d sought to convey. And that image wasn’t accurate. Sure, it was an easy shortcut (“a Hitchcock film will shock with its violence”) but it never really captured the gifting of the maestro. In short: if Hitchcock had continued to make films into his 90s and 100s, he would have made films more like “Hannibal” than “Silence of the Lambs.”

In sum: “Frenzy” is an ugly and uncomfortable film that doesn’t work for myriad reasons... and (worse) points to a director who wound down his career trying to play to type.

Frenzy 1972
Starring: Jon Finch, Barry Foster and Anna Massey
Written by: Anthony Shaffer
Music by: Ron Goodwin (Hitchcock hired Goodwin after hating Henry Mancini’s initial attempt at scoring)