Frenzy
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Movie Reviews of Frenzy
Movie Review: The Wrong Bloke
Summary: 4 Stars
When it was released in 1972 after a couple of slower moving espionage flicks, many reviewers saw Hitchcock's FRENZY as something of a return to form--to say nothing of it being a welcome return to the director's native England. Even after he was firmly ensconced in Hollywood, Hitch had never really ceased making films with an English setting. But aside from the requisite location footage, those films were obviously shot on studio lots--DIAL M FOR MURDER and STAGE FRIGHT being prime examples. And those classics, good as they were, featured American actors in key roles. FRENZY, on the other hand, was veddy British and proudly so. Anglophiles the world over can take delight in the rather spectacular opening shots of the Thames and the Tower Bridge. And many of the exterior shots were filmed in Covent Garden, where decades before Hitchcock's own father had been a greengrocer.
Aside from the neighborhood and overall milieu, I wouldn't go overboard on stressing the autobiographical elements. The return to his homeland does seem to energize the director and make for a ripping good yarn, with a goodly amount of real suspense and gobs of dark Hitchcockian humor. But this is not an intensely personal film, in the manner of VERTIGO, say. Despite its grim premise--serial murder being something of delicate matter in the post-Manson early 70s--FRENZY has a lightness of touch that was largely absent in his classic 60s period. The movie is as much remembered for the wryly humorous domestic scenes between Chief Inspector Oxford (Alec MacGowan) and his ecctric but perceptive wife (Vivien Merchant)as it is for its graphic violence.
I remember any number of critics at the time commenting on the almost complete lack of glamour about the film. The shots of London were often breathtaking, but the cast seemed average in the extreme (if such a thing is possible). Even the potentially dashing Jon Finch (who had just wrapped Polanski's MACBETH) wasn't exactly radiating star power here. Whatever charisma he might have otherwise possessed, is hidden behind a rumpled suit and a bad haircut. The average man caught up in an intrigue he cannot quite fathom isn't a Hollywood luminary like Jimmy Stewart this time out. Finch looks every bit the down-on-his-luck former RAF pilot reduced to tending bar and scuffling his way through life in a Swinging London that seems to be leaving him behind.
And he's really not all that likeable, which may be Hitchcock's cleverest touch. He's anything but a sweetly bumbling Stewart type, or an elegant, cheeky Cary Grant. This character has baggage, much of it under his eyes. This is another "wrong man" tale, but the difference is, you have to work a bit harder to care about this particular wrong man.
Ultimately, the relative obscurity of the cast makes for a much more character driven film, and I'd say, one that's all the stronger for it. There are lot of familiar faces in this movie, but there's a world of difference between looking at a character actor and wondering, "Now where have I seen him before?" and saying, in effect, "Ah, Jimmy Stewart, well, we all know what he brings to the table."
Aside from being a compelling suspense film, FRENZY was also the first Hitchcock film to receive an "R" rating. Much had changed in the ten years since PSYCHO, for instance, and a romantic liaison in a hotel, for instance, would now feature actual nudity. It was the 70s, after all, and such was required in almost every film aimed at an adult audience. Interesting that the master handled this newfound freedom as well as he did. There is nothing that is gratuitous about the nudity in the trysting scenes, and while the equally graphic rape and murder scene (and there's only one, although others are implied)is quite disturbing, it also is anything but gratuitous. (Thank the good Lord and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer for convincing Hitchcock to only portray only ONE of the film's several murders up close and all too personal.)
FRENZY wasn't quite the hit it should have been, but it did serve to demonstrate that the later Hitchcock had lost none of his powers. Good show!
Movie Review: It is so easy to have someone else accused in your place
Summary: 4 Stars
Hitchcock, one of the most famous British expatriates in the cinema industry, came back for one film in England, in London very exactly and he demonstrated in the early 70s he was able to build a cool thriller, in the traditional English style and rhythm and make it fascinating. The case is of course so quaint, so passé and he enjoys making thinks look the way they looked not in the 70s but in the 60s. He concentrates the film on Covent Garden when it was still a fruit and vegetable market, on their pubs, their dealers, their night life and their busy running hectic at times life. Today all that has disappeared and you can find the London Transport Museum where you used to have banana and orange wholesale dealers. Then he worked hard on finding the particular ways Londoners lived at that time, just after coal was banned around 1962. And of course his killer is well integrated in this extremely regular disorganized precipitation. The fashion is just right, the home furniture and various small equipment are just right, authentic, and yet the sarcastic eye of Alfred Hitchcock cannot forget to show the flaws and the drawbacks of this life that is slowly opening up to continental Europe and the whole world. The gourmet classes for housewives teaching them all kinds of French recipes that are of course deliciously failed by these amateurs while the good old bacon and eggs are getting out of fashion. But then we are in pure Hitchcockian fiction. A serial killer who strangles his victims with his ties and then dispose of them, both the victims and the ties together. An imbroglio that makes a friend of that killer be suspected and then, with a little of effort from the killer, that suspected person becomes the convicted killer who is no killer at all. He escapes the prison in the simplest British way you can imagine: he gets himself hospitalized so that he can go and have his vengeance on his friend who had had him arrested. And there the surprise will be total. Fiction again that shows a policeman who gets someone convicted for a serious crime and yet doubts his own conclusion and starts asking some more questions. Why did he not do it before? And he could have listened to his wife who, between serving pig trotters cooked with grapes or some partridges or pigeons cooked with cherries, had suggested that the suspect could not be the criminal for obscure reasons that have to do with feminine intuition. And he adds a good layer of gossip on publicans who both are tyrants in their pubs and informers to the police. That makes a pleasant film altogether whose rhythm is slow enough for peaceful enjoyment and fast enough for some thrilling pleasure. The title is of course one of these tricks Hitchcock was so fond of: he is not lying really, he is just overstating with a tongue in his cheek and that works all the time and we smile after the film since we were trapped into believing it was frantic and it was just intense.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
Movie Review: The Master's last great film
Summary: 4 Stars
"Frenzy" was Hitchcock's last great film and a welcome return to form after the disappointments of "Torn Curtain" and "Topaz".
Once again the familiar Hitchcock ingredients are there - murder (in this case a series of killings), macabre humour, and an innocent man plunged into danger.
The location is London and more specifically Covent Garden, which was where Hitchcock grew up and he clearly revelled in returning to his old stomping ground.
The cast is a collection of first-rate English actors and this helps reinforce the quality of the film despite the unsavoury nature of the story. Indeed, Hitchcock pushes the boundaries of taste with a truly gruesome murder including nudity (this WAS the early 70's) and this is sequence is often trimmed.
The film is blessed with some great camera shots and an appropriately "British" musical score by Ron Goodwin.
A last great film from the director who many consider to be the greatest.
Movie Review: Frenzy
Summary: 4 Stars
Alfred Hitchcock - The Masterpiece Collection (Psycho / Vertigo / Rear Window / The Birds / Shadow of a Doubt / Family Plot / Frenzy / The Man Who Knew Too Much / Marnie / Rope / Saboteur / Topaz / Torn Curtain / The Trouble with Harry)
Since I have been a fan of Alfred Hitchcock for many years I want to collect the ones I have enjoyed the most, and Frenzy is one of those.
Of course, ordering from Amazon is so easy, and I can always count on a fast delivery.
Movie Review: Sadly Overlooked Title
Summary: 4 Stars
Great film that often falls under the radar - sadly Hitch has this tag of not being great after The Birds/Marnie, with bombs Topas/Torn Curtain. Well that is a great misconception and Frenzy is just as good as quite a few of the films he did in his prime. Acting is great and very genuine - this is no Hollywood fairytale with love stories forced in by movie star achetypes - this is Hitch at his darkest.