Zach Vasquez
When Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film Frenzy debuted in cinemas in June of 1972, it was considered a return to form following the disappointing receptions to his prior three films (Marnie, Torn Curtain, and Topaz) and hailed by a number of prominent critics as his most ingenious thriller in years. At the same time, it also produced a ton of backlash, especially amongst women’s groups, due to its depiction of sexual violence—in particular an early rape and murder scene that is by far the most graphic and upsetting in all of Hitch’s filmography.
Over time, the latter opinion has mostly prevailed: Frenzy is almost never brought up in discussions of Hitchcock, and when it is, it is usually singled out for its notoriety and used as an example of why the new freedoms afforded to filmmakers during the 1970s in terms of sex, violence, and profanity could be a double-edged sword.
However, in light of recent news of a new 4K restoration and repertory re-release this August, the film seems primed for reappraisal. And not a moment too soon: for while Frenzy is indeed a repugnant, ugly, and deeply mean-spirited work, it is also a masterpiece—the last to come from one of the (if not the) greatest directors of all time, which not only stands shoulder-to-shoulder with his more famous and celebrated works, but, in the way it maliciously indicts the viewer, casts said works in a new, harsher light.
Adapted from Arthur La Bern’s 1966 novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, Frenzy follows the search for a London serial killer who strangles women with neckties. The real perpetrator, as revealed early on, is Rusk (Barry Forster) a well-liked, suave, and successful grocer. After Rusk claims his latest victim in the form of the ex-wife (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) of friend and fellow service member Blaney (Richard Finch, playing the least agreeable hero in all of Hitchcock), he sets Blaney up to take the fall for his crimes, forcing the former RAF pilot-turned-down at heel barman and his current lover Babs (Anna Massey) to hide from the police while trying to flee the country. On the trail of both men is the seemingly aloof but actually quite keen Scotland Yard Inspector Oxford, who takes counsel from his even more perceptive homemaker wife Mrs. Oxford (Vivien Merchant).
It’s immediately apparent what drew Hitchcock to the story, and in many ways, Frenzy plays like a medley of his greatest hits up to that point: an innocent man-on-the-run (Saboteur, Young and Innocent, The Wrong Man), the psychological character study of a sexually-driven psychopath (Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train), the quirky detective story (Rope, Dial M for Murder). He undoubtedly also felt something of a personal connection to the material—albeit in his expectedly macabre fashion—as his own father was a grocer and merchant in London’s Covent Garden (where many of the on location scenes were filmed). Appropriate that Frenzy would mark the first time Hitchock returned to shoot a film in London since 1950’s Stage Fright.
The most comedic pieces of the film revolve around the Oxfords’ domestic life—a generally blissful existence marred only by Mrs. Oxford’s quixotic obsession with ‘exotic’ cooking (there may be no scene that better sends up British culinary squeamishness than when Mrs. Oxford blanches after tasting her latest concoction: a margarita)—which undoubtedly struck a chord with Hitchock since his own wife and close collaborator Alma suffered a stroke during production, necessitating the filming of a couple of scenes without him while he tended to her.
(As understandably keen as Hitchcock was on the material, the same can’t be said of others. La Bern was disgusted by the finished film and publicly condemned it. Original composer Henry Mancini was fired from the project and replaced by Ron Goodwin. Hitch’s initial choice for Rusk, Michael Caine, turned it down because he objected to the role, which led to a falling out between the two that would last until Hitch’s death in 1980.)
Along with being Hitchcock’s second-to-last feature (his final move, Family Plot, would come out four years later) and his long-awaited return to his native soil, Frenzy also boasts another key distinction within his oeuvre: it is the only one of his films to receive an R rating. Certainly, had the modern ratings system been around in earlier years, other of his work would have received it (Psycho, for example), but there is no denying that he took full advantage of the T’s allowances, particularly in terms of nudity. Whereas he always lamented not being able to show full-frontal nudity in Psycho, Frenzy has two scenes depicting it (albeit both using body doubles in the place of actors Leigh-Hunt and Massay).
While the latter example is merely a brief glimpse of post-coital dressing, the first is a prolonged, graphic and extremely upsetting rape and murder that is anything but titillating. Gone is the genius formalism found in Psycho’s shower montage or the darkly comic staging of Frenzy’s other most famous scene (in which Rusk has to rummage through a moving truck full of potatoes in order to retrieve a piece of evidence from a victim’s cadaver). Instead, he forces the viewer to stew in the pitiful, pathetic, and horrifying violation until it reaches its grim and inevitable conclusion. This scene is so effective that for the next major murder, he tracks away from the action, leaving it to the us to remember what’s come before.
Along with the three aforementioned set pieces, the most memorable and telling moment comes during an early aside, which sees two random characters—a doctor and a solicitor—gleefully pontificate on the necktie murders over a pint at a pub. When the barmaid joins in and mentions that the killer rapes his victims before strangling them, one of the men jokes, “Well, I suppose its nice to know every cloud has a silver lining.” A few moments later, he goes off about what a boon the killings are for business, stating, “We haven’t had a good, juicy series of sex murders since Christie, and they’re so good for the tourist trade. Foreigners somehow expect the squares of London to be fog-wreathed, full of handsome cabs, and littered with ripped whores…”
This scene recalls the meta-commentary on true life murder Hitchcock gives over to two supporting characters throughout Shadow of a Doubt (probably his closest film spiritually to Frenzy), but whereas those scenes have a sly charm about them, this moment in Frenzy reveals the wretched misogyny and banal cruelty at the heart of our obsession with these gruesome headlines.
That Hitchcock puts these words in the mouths of members of both the upper and working classes makes it clear that he’s not letting anyone off the meathook—himself least of all.
The new 4K restoration of “Frenzy” opens in New York on Friday.
