Frenzy (DVD)

A review of the Universal DVD. Frenzy, made in 1972, was the great Alfred Hitchcock's second last film, and represented a late return to form for the master of suspense. It's also a lot more explicit that anything else he made, which sometimes makes his trademark humour seem a bit distasteful. Most cineastes try to ignore the fact the Hitchcock was a raving misogynist who developed an obsession with degrading and killing women on screen. In Frenzy, censorship had relaxed enough to let him get away with more than ever before. 'The Necktie Murderer' is raping and killing women in London. Our hero, Richard Blaney, loses his job in a pub. His already ...  Read the complete review

Frenzy is a 1972 film directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, based on the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Arthur La Bern and adapted for the screen by Anthony Shaffer. The film saw Hitchcock return to Blighty after many years working in the United States and is a suspense thriller set and shot in London, returning to the formula of an ordinary, innocent man in increasingly desperate trouble as he is framed for murders he didn't commit. In this case, it's down on his luck former RAF pilot Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), now reduced to working as a barman at the Globe Public House and rather too fond of helping himself to the booze which, ...  Read the complete review

Frenzy is Hitchcock's penultimate film. Set in London, it begins with eh body of a naked woman being washed up on the banks of the Thames, strangled with a necktie. The necktie killer is wrongly thought to be recently unemployed Dick Blaney (Jon Finch). As Finch goes about his business, the women closest to him start to die, linking poor old Dick to the murders. I particularly enjoyed the location work on Frenzy, from the opening panning shot of the Thames down through Tower Bridge to the hustle and bustle of a very busy Covent Garden. Its Covent Garden that has changed tremendously with its proper fruit and veg stalls, quite different from the arty tat that ...  Read the complete review

If you are expecting a glossy 1950s technicolour Hitchcock film with a trademark cool blonde and a dashing hero, you may be disappointed. Frenzy is set in 1970s London, and has a more gritty, realistic look. It stars Jon Finch as Dick Blaney, the suspicious type who is wrongly accused of being the infamous "necktie killer" (Hitchcock fans will be familiar with this "wrong man" theme ). We find out early on that the real murderer is his jovial friend, Bob Rusk (played by the Michael Caine-like Barry Foster.) The necktie murderer is stalking the women of London (Covent garden in particular) raping them and then strangling them with his tie. ...  Read the complete review