Hitchcock Goes For The Juggular...Literally

It had been a slow nine years for the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. After his 1963 horror classic THE BIRDS, Hitchcock made three films--1964's MARNIE; 1966's TORN CURTAIN; and 1969's TOPAZ--that were all considered, to put it gently, below the usual standards of the man. But in 1971, he went back to his birthplace of England for the first time in two decades to make what would be his second-to-last film overall, and his final contribution to the horror genre, with FRENZY. The result was very controversial for its time, due to its explicit nature (the result of censorship restrictions being lifted), but the film is now seen as something of a final masterpiece of a great director.

London is plagued by a series of gruesome murders involving women who have been strangled with a necktie. The police are totally baffled because there is as yet no motive to draw on. In the meantime, we are introduced to Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a former RAF officer who hasn't had much luck at many things since the War--he has been divorced two years; he drinks too much; he is just a bit too violent with people at times. His only real friend is Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), a congenial fruits-and-vegetables salesman in London's famed Covent Garden. But he also makes amends with his ex-wife (Barbara Leigh-Hunt), even after he has been somewhat rude to her in her matrimonial agency office, a row overheard by her secretary (Jean Marsh). It is those circumstances that will throw him into a firestorm of trouble when Leigh-Hunt is strangled by none other than Finch's best friend, Foster. Marsh finds Leigh-Hunt's body in the office and immediately reports Foster to the police.

The film thus takes on a classic Hitchcock theme--a man being sought by the cops for a crime he didn't commit, simply due to circumstantial evidence. Finch must somehow try to clear his name, a task that becomes even harder when his best girlfriend (Anna Massey) falls victim. Once caught and convicted, Finch is thrown in prison, but he now screams that it is Foster who has committed the strangulations. The head inspector (Alec McCowen) on the case soon believes there is truth in Finch's statement, and then it becomes a race to stop Foster before he strikes again.

Utilizing a cast of very fine British actors who were virtually unknown to U.S. audiences, Hitchcock nevertheless made FRENZY into a thoroughly intriguing thriller. But he also took full advantage in the relaxation of censorship standards that had occurred as the result of the MPAA ratings system coming into effect in 1968. Foster's rape and strangulation of Leigh-Hunt is a sequence so shocking and prolonged that it even gives the vaunted shower scene in Hitchcock's 1960 classic PSYCHO a run for its money. The language, courtesy of Anthony Shaffer's scintillating screenplay (adapted from Arthur LaBern's book "Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leicester Square"), is also a good deal rougher than in previous Hitchcock films as well, though it is also quite droll in the typical English fashion. Hitchcock also kept audiences off balance in making Finch look and seem guilty because of his nasty disposition and making Foster seem happy-go-lucky when in actuality he has this thing for women--seducing them, and then strangling them.

On the other hand, FRENZY has plenty of moments of suspense that are pure Hitchcock, and have rarely been matched by his successors (Brian DePalma and Steven Spielberg being two very good disciples of the Master's style). The other element very much in evidence is the director's black and macabre brand of humor. One scene finds Foster having to retrieve an incriminating piece of evidence from a body he put in a truck full of potatoes, a scene in which he has to break off the fingers of that victim (Hitchcock is said to have remarked that the scene "improved the taste of the potatoes"). Another one has two London policeman talking about the crimes, and one of them says, "We haven't had a juicy series of murders since Christie--and they're so good for the tourism." Still another one has McCowen, a meat-and-potatoes man if ever there was one, enduring the "gourmet" cooking of his dotty but well-meaning wife (Vivien Merchant); it is a scene that is absolutely priceless because of McCowen's reactions and his dry and very British sense of timing.

Even now, after three decades in which Hollywood horror and suspense films have gotten much more sexually explicit and graphically violent, FRENZY is still a fairly intense experience. Though it was only a modest box office hit, it still showed that Hitchcock had not lost his skill at placing audiences right dead in the middle of his stories. It is certainly inappropriate for younger audiences to view without parental supervision (the 'R' rating is there for a reason); but for those who want a classic film director's final true masterpiece, FRENZY is a best bet.