You're Not Wearing Your Tie: Frenzy

Frenzy is Alfred Hitchcock's penultimate film. There's a lot to suggest that as artists age, they lose something intangible that leaves them unable to create at their peak level anymore. Independent filmmaker and buddy of Bruce Campbell, Josh Becker, wrote a piece about the Lifespan of Creativity. Whether you fully agree with the thesis or not, there's a lot of evidence to support it. Hitchcock's prior few films to Frenzy were failures at the box office and one finds little love for Family Plot, his final film (while it's not terrific, I give Torn Curtain some leniency, but I do have a bit of a man-crush on Paul Newman). Hitchcock was 73 when he made Frenzy and a damn fine movie it is. Maybe he got lucky in his old age or he found material that suited his abilities, but Frenzy is a ripping yarn.

The film starts off deliberately, establishing the characters and their relationships with each other. There is very little waste in Frenzy and nearly everything that happens in these early scenes comes back later, so while some may find them a bit slow, the rest of the movie benefits greatly. The necktie murderer has struck again (and Hitchcock is among the witnesses who sees the body wash ashore of the Thames). Richard Blaney (John Finch, who is awesome in this) is fired and hard up for cash. He has a relationship with the barmaid, Babs (Anna Massey) from where he was just fired. His friend Rusk (Barry Foster, though apparently it was offered to Michael Caine first) is well-off and sympathetic to his struggles and he has an ex-wife (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) with whom he takes out his frustrations of the day. Then we watch his ex- get murdered. I hesitate saying by who because only thirty minutes in, the murderer is revealed. However, there's some nifty misdirection so I choose not to take the experience away from you, the would-be viewer.

By revealing the killer so early, it changes the dynamic of "stalking the victim" trope we are so used to in slasher movies and others of this ilk. There's no need for POV shots or shadowy cheats so that we don't reveal the killer, or my favorite: " It's you!" We watch the killer go off with a woman and know she's doomed unless someone intervenes. Not likely. 

On the other hand, Hitchcock plays with one of his favorite themes: the wrong man. Evidence piles up and every little thing our innocent man does ends up biting him in the keister. There's very little he can do. Especially when a "witness" is giving her statement to the police describing him in full detail and, even though she wasn't in the same room as the man and the victim, she is fully willing to say what was happening inside said room. I can't help but feel like this scene is a satire of police investigations and how they build a case (and on people who want to "help"). The audience knows the truth, but damn it, this women is certain that she's right!

There are some elements that don't really make sense if one thinks about them. Hitchcock would refer to those of us that do as "the plausibles." For instance, if the neck tie murderer is truly a serial killer who leaves behind no clues and is seemingly random, why would he all of a sudden start picking off people he knows and trying to set up a frame job? Isn't that exactly how people get caught? There's also some silliness in the manner in which people die. Tongues hanging out of their mouths, strained look on their faces (OK, the latter might happen after strangulation, but the dangling tongues looks ridiculous).

I'm not really concerned about those aspects, though. While there's nothing as memorable as the shower scene or the crop duster, there's some really delightful stuff happening. The scene in the potato truck is tense and funny and momentarily has the viewer rooting for the bad guy. The writer (Anthony Shaffer) really does a great job a ratcheting up the tension and throwing up roadblocks. There's also an amazing backwards tracking shot after a victim gets taken up to the killers apartment. We don't follow them up the stairs. Instead, Hitchcock lingers on the staircase then slowly backs out of the building into the bustling street and holds on the entrance for several beats until some girls walk by and a scream is heard. It's incredibly effective and apparently, there's a hidden cut which I missed entirely. Frenzy features several of these holds while action happens off-screen or behind doors and every time it feels like a bold, but natural decision. On top of all that, the film has one hell of a great button line.



This trailer is truly bizarre. Hitchcock's narration is almost identical in style to that of his trailer for Psycho, except it's edited like so many cheesy horror movies from the '70s. It's almost as if the studio was indulging Hitchcock to be silly, but didn't trust him to make the movie appealing. I don't know what it is, but there's something disjointed about it. Maybe that's why the keep hacking the word "Frenzy" in half in the trailer...