Hitchcock’s 52nd film manages to combine many of his most popular elements into one story. We get the wrongly accused man on the run -- this time very similar to one of his other lost gems, Young and Innocent. We also get a Strangers on a Train story of guilt transferred. Plus we get a sexy, violent, shocking serial killer story like Psycho. Add a twist ending and you've got quintessential Hitchcock. Oh, and it's funny and clever, too. The screenplay was written by the brilliant Anthony Shaffer, writer of the original Sleuth, the original Wicker Man, and Somersby. This is the best Hitchcock film in the post-Psycho period. Continue reading ...
Frenzy (1972) -- Screenplay by Anthony Schaffer based on the novel by Arthur La Bern.
One of the great things about this movie is that it also manages to usefood as a leitmotif. One of the characters works in the produce industry, much of the story takes place in London's Covent Garden food market (where Hitchcock’s father worked), and the Detective's wife istaking a gourmet cooking class, which supplies a lot of comedy as he attempts to eat her concoctions. We get food and friendship. Oh, and this is probably Hitchcock's only R-rated film.
Nutshell: Bitter bartender Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) seems to have lost everything in his divorce, including many of his friends. The one pal who took his side was Bob Rusk (Barry Foster) who runs a produce company at Covent Garden. Note the initials of both characters are the same, just reversed. These two are polar opposites. Where Blaney's life is a mess, Rusk is on top of the world.
London is plagued by the Necktie Killer who strangles swinging single women with neckties. When Blaney’s ex-wife (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) becomes the latest victim only a day after they had a very public fight, he finds himself on the run from the police. Unfortunately, everyone sided with the ex-wife in the divorce, and no one believes that he's innocent. When another Necktie Killer victim can be traced back to Blaney even his old pal Rusk thinks he’s guilty and turns him in to the police. Lots of twists and turns including one of those great end twists where the real killer is revealed.
Experiment: After a string of failed experiments that flopped big time, Hitchcock plays it safe as far as story is concerned. There are some visual experiments, which we’ll look at in a moment.
Hitch Appearance: In a crowd listening to a political speech at the beginning of the film, then someone spots a dead woman floating in the Thames River, naked except for a necktie. “Is that my club tie?” someone asks.
Great Scenes: One of the interesting things about this film is that you get a great behind the scenes look at the wholesale produce business in London. There are some great shots of Covent Garden’s market, including a high overhead. You get a good feel for the place.
Blaney is an interesting protagonist -- an angry, bitter, ex-war hero who manages to pick a fight with anyone who tries to help or show him pity. He has enough self-pity, no need for anyone else’s. But this leads to some great blow-ups that get him fired and eventually make him the prime suspect in his ex-wife’s murder.
Love and sex are the leitmotifs, here -- with Rusk, a real lady’s man, always talking about women. Blaney’s ex-wife runs a dating service, and people tend to be defined by their sex lives. The police detective investigating the murders (Alec McCowen) has been married for years, and his wife is trying to spice up their relationship with cooking lessons. The way to a man’s heart ...
After Blaney has a blow up with his wife in public, Rusk shows up atthe dating service. He has “peculiar needs” when it comes to women, and Blaney’s ex-wife refuses him service so he rapes and murders her with his necktie. About a third of the way into the film we know who the Necktie killer is -- it’s Blaney’s best friend! By the 33-minute point, Blaney is on the run from the police with nowhere to hide.
When Blaney finds some money his ex-wife put in his coat pocket, he calls his girlfriend, Babs (Anna Massey), from the bar and they go to a no-tell hotel, where they are given the “Cupid Suite”. Babs knows Blaney could never be the Necktie Killer -- he only owns two ties. There have already been more murders than that. The hotel desk clerk recognizes Blaney from a wanted photo and calls the police. Blaney manages to escape without his clothes and is now on the run in his pajamas. Hard to be inconspicuous when that’s all you have to wear.
Rusk kills another woman connected to Blaney, and we get one of the greatest shots in film history: a long backwards tracking shot out a door, down some stairs, through an entry hall, out a door, across a bustling street, then craning up to see more of the building. This would have been a difficult shot with a Steady-cam, only that wasn’t invented for another four years.
Here's the trick: the camera is on a jib arm for the stairs, then there is actually a cut when we leave the house, which is covered by a man carrying a sack of potatoes who walks in front of the camera. I call this a Hitchcock Wipe. Spielberg used it in Jaws for the cool scene on the beach when the Kittner Boy gets chomped by the shark.
One interesting element of the film is that we spend a great deal of time away from Blaney. Most Hitchcock films stayed with the protagonist for the majority of the scenes. This is true of North by Northwest and Rear Window. But here Blaney shares screen time with Rusk and the Detective. The three seem to have equal screen time.
There is a great scene where Rusk puts a victim’s body in a sack of potatoes that will be driven back to the farm where they came from. Earlier in the film there is a clever bit of market conversation thatwe never suspect would be setting up this scene, but after cleaning up the murder mess Rusk realizes that his initialed tiepin is missing. The victim grabbed it while he was killing her! He goes back to the potato truck, searches for the sack with the dead woman, but the truck starts up and drives away! This is a great suspense scene, with the villain in peril of being discovered. And it works! Rusk retrieves the tiepin, but now must escape the speeding potato truck.
Blaney has no one else to turn to for help except his old pal Rusk, and Rusk turns him over to the police, where he is arrested and thrown in a cell. This is all seen from high overhead, turning Blaney into nothing more than a pawn.
The scenes where the Detective must suffer through his wife’s gourmet cooking are hilarious. How do you pretend to enjoy eel head soup? But these scenes do more than provide a laugh; they show the Detective slowly beginning to believe that Blaney may not be guilty. He is a pivotal character that begins as an antagonist chasing Blaney, but slowly changes sides and tries to find evidence to exonerate him.
There’s a great scene where the Detective and his wife are discussing the dead woman in the potato truck. He explains that the killer had to pry open her rigor-stiffened hand, breaking each of her fingers, to get the tiepin, as his wife snaps a break stick in half. Ouch! This is done throughout the film -- very clever stuff! Sound and image working together.
The film works its way to a great twist ending and doesn’t waste a second of film time after, but goes directly to closing credits.
It’s a great summation of Hitchcock's films that also works as kind of a little tour of London and a behind-the-scenes of the Covent Garden market. Lots of suspense, twists, and a fun look at what happens when you lose all of your friends, except for the bad boys you used to hang out with as a bachelor, in a divorce. Great script by Shaffer, great cinematography by Gilbert Taylor. Marred by awful music by Ron Goodwin (replacing Bernard Herrmann after he had a falling out with Hitch). Hitchcock's best film in the post-Psycho era (after he began to believ eall of those critics that called him a genius, and made mostly cruddy films). A modern film, that holds up really well.
William C. Martell has written 19 produced films for cable and video, including three HBO World Premieres, a pair of Showtime films, the thriller Hard Evidence (Warner Bros.), and the family film Invisible Mom. He is the author of The Secrets of Action Screenwriting and can be reached at Scriptsecrets.net. A version of this post appeared on Scriptsecrets.net.
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