"You're not wearing your tie." (Frenzy (DVD))

Member Name: Jake Speed

Product:	Frenzy (DVD)
Date:	13/11/09 (106 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Highly entertaining

Disadvantages: A bit grim in places maybe

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, unsurprisingly, soon leads to the sack. Only a little financial support from his ex-wife, Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt), who runs a dating agency, offers any comfort as Blaney is temporarily forced to sleep in a hostel for the homeless. Meanwhile, London is being rocked by a series of bizarre murders that always involve a woman being strangled by a necktie - which the killer leaves dangling around the neck of the unfortunate victim...

"We haven't had a good juicy series of sex murders since Christie," we overhear someone cheerfully saying in a pub. "And they're so good for the tourist trade. Foreigners somehow expect the squares of London to be fog-wreathed, full of hansom cabs and littered with ripped whores, don't you think?" When Brenda becomes the latest victim of the necktie murderer at her matchmaking office, the innocent Blaney is in very big trouble indeed because he was the last person seen in the vicinity of the offices and was spied being very argumentative and angry with his late ex-wife by her secretary. He is now the prime suspect for Brenda's murder. "Can you imagine me creeping around London," muses the bewildered Blaney. "Strangling all those women with ties? That's ridiculous...for a start, I only own two." As his situation becomes increasingly desperate, Blaney finds himself relying on his old friend, chirpy cockney Covent Garden fruit trader Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), for help and somewhere to hide.

Frenzy is a highly entertaining twilight return to form by Hitchcock and a film I've always enjoyed a great deal. It's fun to have him back in London and although this is a slightly anachronistic London - more the London of Hitchcock's memory than a real one at times - with some rather overripe cockney accents, the authentic location work (the picture begins with a body being fished out of the Thames) and market bustle always adds a nice atmosphere to the film. The cast is good fun too with Jon Finch veering into so bad he's good territory with a gloriously theatrical turn as the down on his heels Blaney. Finch has a crisp, loud and plummy thespy voice obviously crafted for the stage but is also a trifle wooden sometimes. The mixture is curiously compelling as he bellows lines like "I distinctly ordered a large Brandy!" to staff in back steet pubs as if he was onstage in a production of Richard II or something. "Twenty to bloody one," booms Finch in his posh, over-enunciated way after forgetting to place a bet on a dead cert. "Christ, damn it to hell!" The early scenes, featuring no less than Bernard Cribbens as Felix Forsythe, Blaney's bad-tempered, foul-mouthed, lecherous and thoroughly miserable landlord/boss, are very funny.

There are some really great moments in the film, in particular a fantastic bit where the necktie murderer (who is revealed fairly early on) accidently leaves important evidence in the hand of a victim he's dumped in some sacks of potatoes. Realising his mistake, he must dive in the back of a moving lorry full of dusty potato sacks and attempt to prize the evidence free from a hand already frozen with rigor mortis by breaking the fingers! It's a wonderful, macabre set-piece full of tension. Another great moment occurs during the (somewhat disturbing) murder of Brenda when Hitchcock pulls the camera away from the scene before things become too grim and takes us on a long, silent tracking shot down the stairs and out into the eventual hustle and noise of the street. There are some enjoyably showy camera flourishes in Frenzy and this one is quite chilling in effect as we are shown that even if Brenda cried out no one would hear her anyway. Frenzy has several interesting moments where a door or window closes or the camera moves away just as we are about to see or hear something important. The film seems even more risque than Hitchcock's usual fare with some nudity and trademark misogyny and innuendo, but Frenzy also has an almost tongue-in-cheek air at times.

Alec McCowen - who of course played Q in Never Say Never Again if I might be allowed a moment of gratuitous James Bond trivia - is fun too as Chief Inspector Oxford and there are moments of levity and black humour as he discusses the grisly ongoing case with Mrs Oxford (Vivien Merchant) over dinner. "No, discretion is not traditionally the strong suit of the psychopath, dear. Believe me, that's what we're dealing with." Mrs Oxford is undertaking experiments in gourmet cooking and on a French cooking class. She produces various bizarre and inedible dinners for the Chief Inspector, which frequently lead to him having gigantic secret meals of eggs and bacon in his office at the police station. These comic dinner scenes were an addition by screenwriter Anthony Shaffer and deemed superfluous by some critics but personally I've always loved them. Hitchcock seems to link food to sexual desire as a motif or theme, Chief Inspector Oxford noting that the murderer will kill again - "When his appetite is whetted." McCowen and Merchant are both funny and Mrs Oxford's eccentric and rather meagre interpretations of classic French cuisine are hilarious. McCowen's pained expressions as he warily prods at a plate of pig's trotters or some such with his fork and surreptitiously attempts to dispose of his latest unwanted dinner without his wife seeing him are always amusing. Anna Massey, who I always recall from the classic Amicus anthology film Vault of Horror, also appears as Jane 'Babs' Milligan, a barmaid and girlfriend of Blaney, and Van Der Valk star Barry Foster is good value as the fruit munching Bob Rusk. "Don't forget," says Rusk to Blaney. "Bob's your uncle."

Frenzy lacks Hitchcock's usual gloss, elegant villains and beautiful women (even the hero here is rather threadbare and unlikable) and has a faintly nasty edge but it is an awful lot of fun too with plenty of twists and turns, audience manipulation, memorable moments, dark humour, in-jokes, and a good cast full of familiar faces. Frenzy was one last return to form for the master of suspense and is well worth watching for anyone who has never seen it before.

Summary: Good fun