Frenzy

 1972

   Frenzy is the penultimate thriller from Hitchcock about a man who is falsely accused of being a serial strangler in London.  It clocks in at just under two hours, but it moves along very swiftly for a film with very few characters and a fairly simple plot.  Richard Blaney, a pub worker who has just lost his job and his home, is the main suspect in the necktie killings of several young women, one of whom is his ex-wife and another his current girlfriend.  Hitchcock shows us who the real killer is very early on in the movie, which allows us to sit back and enjoy watching the master work his magic - no red herrings here.  It is almost like he is setting up a challenge for himself - let's see if I can show the audience who the killer is and still put them on the edge of their seats.  Of course, the master succeeds.  The suspense is palpable throughout, particularly in a scene where the real killer is in the back of a moving potato truck trying desperately to dislodge a damning piece of evidence from the stiffened hand of his most recent victim.  I have only seen about 7 Hitchcock films, but that's enough to see that he truly was the Master of Suspense.  His camera seems like a character itself.  It comes alive when we follow the killer up to his apartment with his next victim in tow and then, just before he allows us inside, Hitchcock leaves them be and slowly backs down the stairwell and out into the street below.  The fact that this is shot backwards is what makes it so effective - as if we have seen something that we're not supposed to and we have to quietly tiptoe away from the scene.  The sound design is fantastic, going from the silent stairs to the bustling street.  He doesn't need to show us the rest.
   The sound decisions are evident again in a later scene where we are positioned right outside the courtroom as the judge is reading Blaney's verdict.  A man opens the door to the courtroom and we hear the judge ask the jury if they have reached a decision, then he shuts the door just as the judge is reading the verdict and the sound is completely cut out.  He reopens the door and we hear the judge in the middle of his sentence.  It is not the type of heavy door that would completely block out sound either, it is a thin, swinging door with windows.  It's a great scene.  

   There are, in typical Hitchcock style, moments of humor.  I laughed at the way he showed the dead women with their eyes wide open and their tongues hanging out to the side.  The lead inspector assigned to the case, played very well by Alec McCowen, has a hilarious obsession with simple foods and we watch him eat nearly an entire breakfast for lunch while he explains to his partner that people tend to over-complicate foods in England.  There are two really funny dinner scenes at his home with his wife cooking the most disgusting-looking 'fancy' foods (fish-head soup and pig feet roast, to name two).  The inspector plays up the gag by never actually eating any of the food, but instead dumping the soup back into its serving bowl while his wife isn't looking and then taking giant gulps of booze to mask the bad taste.  It reminded me of a child being forced to eat his peas and attempting to drink as much Kool-Aid as possible in order to make it more bearable.  In a second scene, she stands right above him while he takes a bite of pig feet but he never swallows it while he talks to her about the case he is investigating.  All the while, she is oblivious to his disdain for her cooking.  When his partner shows up with news about the case, she makes him a salted margarita instead of something simpler - he takes one sip and leaves.  I don't know how important this is to the story, but I mention it because I can't help but think this is Hitchcock, or the writers, commenting on their own personal misadventures with food.  I got a kick out of it. 

  Frenzy is a solid thriller that is streaming on Netflix until February 29th.  Since I have only seen a handful of other movies directed by Hitchcock, I don't have a more global understanding of where this film fits in with his many others.  I noticed that his previous movie, Topaz, was released in 1969, which was three years prior to Frenzy.  This was the longest span of time between movies, with the exception of the four years between this one and his final film, Family Plot.  Again, I don't know if there is any more significance to this other than the man was averaging a movie a year for five decades and was getting tired (his own failing health and the health problems of his wife probably contributed as well).  People with a much better understanding of his career will be able to speak on this much further.  I can say, however, that even as he aged into his 70s, Alfred Hitchcock remained at the top of his game.