B


That was a really weird one for me. It didn't work as much as a good crime thriller/drama, but much rather as a good, brutally dark comedy. The performances are good all-around, especially by Barry Foster and Alec McCowen (the scenes with him eating his wife's meals are priceless!). The payoff is very much anti-climatic and generally lacking, though.

Frenzy

A latter-career thriller from one of the greatest filmmakers to have lived, Frenzy focuses on the "Necktie Murderer" and a wrongly convicted man, Richard Blaney, with all the evidence stacked against him. Hitchcock has made a superb film here. Some shots and ideas are just so beautiful for a film made now, let alone in 1972. The tracking shot on the second murder when Rusk invites Babs back to his flat features a potent realisation of such an attack happening in broad daylight, unbeknownst to anyone. Frenzy is not quite as perfect or gripping as his earlier suspense films, but still up there. I feel an audience will be less sympathetic towards Blaney because he looks so unkempt and dirty and exactly like the type of seedy dude that would leer over young women (which is also why this film is great because it challenges prejudice).

The scenes with Chief Inspector Oxford and his wife (Vivien Merchant) are hilarious.

B+

Unlike his final film, Family Plot (which felt ahead of its time as an influence to the Coen's style), Frenzy very much feels like it is clinging to classic cinema and not in a good way. A down-on-his-luck hard-edged man who has been framed for murder, somewhere we've all been before. The only new things are the tits, which Alfred loves to show right before he kills all the women in the cast. But fear not, Hitchcock also uses this project to promote a critical and important message to the masses - his wife's cooking is terrible!

D