Hitchcock’s 52nd film manages to combine many of his most popular elements into one story: We get the wrongly accused man story - this time very similar to one of his other lost gems, YOUNG AND INNOCENT. We also get a STRANGERS ON A TRAIN story of guilt transferred. Plus we get a sexy, violent, shocking serial killer story like PSYCHO. Hey, add a twist ending and you've got quintessential Hitchcock. Oh, and it's funny and clever, too - screenplay by the brilliant Anthony Shaffer...writer of the original SLEUTH, the original WICKER MAN, and SOMMERSBY. This is the best Hitchcock film in the post-PSYCHO period.
After a bunch of interesting failures after PSYCHO - movies that only Robin Wood could love - Hitchcock needed a hit... and here it is. FRENZY is a return to England and to London. The business had changed, and Hitchcock - who always seemed ahead of the curve - had coasted on past brilliance in the 60s until he stopped dead. This was the film that restarted him - and probably the film he should have gone out on. Though it’s about a man who is wrongly accused, he isn’t on the run like in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, instead he’s kind of “a man on the hide” - trying to find some safe place to hole up or some scheme to avoid the police by being smuggled out of the country. After years of sly winks from Hitchcock about sex - trains entering tunnels - the new permissive world of cinema practically demanded that he do a film full of nudity and sex. This is Hitchcock’s only R rated film. Instead of those glossy Hollywood “personality” stars like Cary Grant that he had used in the past, or the new method actors and low-key guys like Paul Newman - who didn’t match his style, FRENZY stars a bunch of fine British stage actors. You don’t know their names, but you may have seen them in movies or on TV before. The hostess of Masterpiece Theater, Jean Marsh, plays a role. Whether Hitchcock was returning to his roots or his comfort zone, the results are a fun and frightening little film that is still fun to watch.
Nutshell: Bitter bartender Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) seems to have lost everything in his divorce, including many of his friends. The one pal who took his side was Bob Rusk (Barry Foster) who runs a produce company at Covent Garden. These two are polar opposites. Where Blaney's life is a mess, Rusk is on top of the world.
London is plagued by the Neck Tie Killer - who strangles swinging single women with neck ties. When Blaney’s ex-wife (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) becomes the latest victim only a day after they had a very public fight, he finds himself on the run from the police. Unfortunately, everyone sided with the ex-wife in the divorce, and no one will believe he's innocent. And when another Neck Tie Killer victim can be traced back to Blaney? Even his old pal Rusk thinks he’s guilty... and turns him in to the police. Lots of twists and turns, and one of those great end twists where the real killer is revealed.
Hitch Appearance: In a crowd listening to a political speech - right
at the beginning of the film... then someone spots a dead woman floating in the Thames River, naked except for a neck tie. “Is that my club tie?” someone asks.
Hitch Stock Company: Elsie Randolph who plays the Hotel Clerk was also in RICH AND STRANGE (1931).
Birds: One of the few Hitchcock films without birds - though there are some seagulls in the opening shot and a quail is served at dinner.
Experiment: Hitchcock plays it safe as far as story is concerned. FRENZY is a great example of taking us into a world, Hero & Villain “Flipsides”, character flaw creating story, set ups, and traditional twist endings. There are also some visual experiments in the film that we will look at in a moment.
SPOILERS!!!
Motifs: One of the great things about this movie is that it also manages to use *food* as a leitmotif - not only is one of the characters in the produce industry, and much of the story takes place in London's Covent Garden food market (where Hitchcock’s father worked), the Detective's wife is taking a gourmet cooking class... which supplies a lot of comedy as he attempts to eat her odd concoctions. We get food and friendship and romance as story elements that pop up in a variety of places throughout the film.
Love and sex are also leitmotifs, here - with Rusk a real lady’s man, always talking about women. Blaney’s ex-wife runs a dating service, and people tend to be defined by their sex lives. The police detective investigating the murders (Alec McCowen) has been married for years, and his wife is trying to spice up their relationship... with cooking lessons. The way to a man’s heart...
After Blaney has a blow up with his wife in public, Rusk shows up at the dating service. He has “peculiar appetites” when it comes to women, and Blaney’s ex-wife refuses him service... so he rapes and murders her with his neck tie. About a third of the way into the film we know who the Neck Tie Killer is - and it’s Blaney’s best friend! And by the 33 minute point, Blaney is on the run from the police with nowhere to hide.
When Blaney finds some money his ex-wife put in his coat pocket, he calls his girlfriend from the bar Babs (Anna Massey) and they go to a no-tell hotel, where they are given the “Cupid Suite”. Babs knows Blaney could never be the Neck Tie Killer - he only owns two ties. There have already been more murders than that. The hotel desk clerk recognizes Blaney from a wanted photo and calls the police. Blaney manages to escape without his clothes and his now on the run in his pajamas. Hard to be inconspicuous when that’s all you have to wear.
World Of The Story: One of the interesting things about this film is that you get a great behind the scenes look at the wholesale produce business in London. You often hear people say in interviews that “New York is a character in our film”, and usually that’s BS, but sometimes a location *can* be a character. One of the great things about movies is that they allow us to visit places we have never been and experience things we will probably never experience. Who wants to be falsely accused of murder? Just as NORTH BY NORTHWEST took us on a tour of famous sites between New York and Mt. Rushmore, FRENZY takes us on a tour of the Covent Garden Market and the wholesale produce business.
There are some great shots of Covent Garden’s market, including a high overhead. You get a good feel for the place, but the story takes us behind the scenes to see how the market works. Because Rusk’s business is wholesale produce, we get to see his warehouse and hear him make deals as the background to scenes. The audience is fascinated by how things work - that’s why we have all of those procedural shows on TV - but we aren’t only interested by crime scenes, we are interested in reality shows about how restaurants work and commercial fishermen and truck drivers. We love to see behind the curtain. Every story takes place in some world, and part of our job as screenwriters is to show the audience the secrets of that world - the things we didn’t know. This can be a travelogue like NORTH BY NORTHWEST or a documentary like FRENZY - both are the thriller versions of something you might see on National Geographic.
The key to showing the audience the world of your story is to show us how things work as part of the story - Rusk has a conversation about some of the produce having a short shelf life so he has to get rid of it, and there is a conversation about sending old potatoes back to the farm... which enters into the story later. There’s a scene where Rusk goes through his warehouse and we see every element of his business. The other key is to find some interesting little details - one of the things I love about Elmore Leonard novels are those cool details like the rubber bands on the grip of a pistol to keep it from slipping. Might have been a Leonard novel where I first read about super-gluing to find latent finger prints - that’s cool! Look for those interesting details that people will remember and talk about after seeing the film. Hey, can we trim the brown spots off those veggies and still sell them? Can we turn those apples over so that the brown spots don’t show?
The most important thing is that the world of the story is *part* of the story. Those potatoes being sent back to the farm because they didn’t sell end up being the perfect place for the killer to hide a body. The potatoes are shipped in a truck - and we get to see most of the trip, including the cruddy diner where truckers stop for a meal on the road. The body gets into the truck by the tools of the trade - a dolly. I did an article for Script Magazine ages ago called Hitchcock’s Chocolates about how he consistently uses the tools of the character’s trade as part of the story - in the remake of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH Jimmy Stewart is a doctor who gives his wife a sedative before telling her that their son has been kidnaped. So Rusk uses all of the tools and elements of the produce market in the story - as part of the story.
When Blaney gets fired, his friend Rusk gives him a carton of grapes to help him out... and a tip on a horse.
Flipsides: Richard Blaney is our protagonist and Bob Rusk ends up being the antagonist - notice that they share the same initials, but reversed? And each character is almost the opposite of the other - Rusk is “lucky” and seems to breeze through life without any problems, he gives Blaney that race horse tip... and Blaney doesn’t have any money to bet. Rusk’s horse wins, but Blaney still loses. Rusk owns his own business, Blaney gets fired from his job as a bartender about a minute after he’s introduced. Rusk is great with the ladies, Blaney is divorced and throughout the film seems to have problems with women. One of the best gags is that Blaney is *sure* he’s going to score with his ex-wife... but ends up sleeping on a cot at the Salvation Army. Rusk is cool and glib and always smiling, Blaney has some serious anger issues and always seems to be snarling and frowning. Though each man has similarities to the other, if one is positive the other is negative.
In my long out of print Action Screenwriting book I talk about heroes and villains who are “flipsides” - like Indiana Jones and Belloq in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. This is a great way to define your protagonist and antagonist - find their common ground (like both are adventurous archeologists) and then show where they are opposites. What’s interesting about Rusk and Blaney is that Rusk seems like as genuinely nice and caring guy - he would do anything to help his friend out. And Rusk even seems to care about the feelings of his victims, kind of - he tells Blaney’s ex-wife that he wouldn’t do anything to a woman she didn’t want done (well, except rape and kill them, I guess). Blaney, on the other hand, seems to think only about himself. He is always asking people to do him favors - like getting Babs to collect his things from the apartment behind the bar. But he also suffers from the sin of pride - he’s a loser who doesn’t want to look like a loser, so he’s always getting angry when people try to help him, and starts the film off throwing all of his money at his boss when he gets fired to pay for his drinks and that advance on his salary. When Rusk asks if he needs money, he *must* say no to keep his pride, even though it’s obvious the reason why he went there in the first place was to hit him up for a loan. Same thing with his ex-wife. Blaney is isolated from society before he’s accused of being the Neck Tie Killer. Where Rusk charms people into doing things for him, Blaney is so bristley he pushes away the people who want to help him.
The Clues Lead To The Hero: One of the great things about the way this script is plotted is that all of the clues to the Neck Tie Killer lead right to Blaney. Every woman he comes in contact with ends up being a victim! How can he ever convince the police, or anybody else, that he’s *not* the killer? In a story where a man is wrongly accused of a crime, one of the difficulties is to find a logical reason why he would be accused in the first place, and then keeping him wrongly accused for the rest of the story. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST, we have George Kaplan - the fake spy that Roger O. Thornhill thinks has all of the answers - and that keeps Thornhill going to the wrong place at the very wrong time and staying deep in trouble. In most other Hitchcock films we get something similar - the protagonist chases after the villain and the authorities believe he is the villain. But in FRENZY we have a different solution - Blaney’s friend Rusk knows who Blaney knows - knows that his ex-wife is doing well in her business (first scene between them), knows that he’s sleeping with Babs who works at the bar (also in the first scene between them), so all of the women that Blaney knows, Rusk knows. When Rusk kills one, Blaney is blamed. The great thing about FRENZY is how *friendship* enters into the story again and again - if Blaney and Rusk had not been friends, Blaney would never be prime suspect in the Neck Tie Killings. Blaney’s Air Force pal ends up being the guy who offers to hide him... except his wife wants to turn him in to the police. Again - a friendship that puts Blaney at risk... causing him to lose his temper yet again.
Triple Set Ups: There are many great set ups & pay offs in the film - and they seem completely invisible. In Rusk’s first scene he uses his monogrammed tie pin to pick his teeth, and does this throughout the film. You think it’s just a bit of business - maybe something the actor came up with.... but it’s actually a set up for a later suspense scene. Also, in a throw away conversation about the produce business, Rusk talks to another produce guy about a shipment of potatoes that is being returned. We think this is just showing us the world of the story at the time, but it is also a set up. And the third bit of set up is Rusk telling a victim, “You’re my type” - which is particularly chilling at the time, but also a set up. None of these three things seems like a set up at all...
That Long Tracking Shot: On of the most amazing shots in film history is in FRENZY - Rusk takes another woman connected to Blaney up to his apartment and tells her “You’re my type” as they enter his apartment. Because that phrase has been set up as part of Rusk’s Neck Tie Killer side, we don’t need to go inside the apartment and see him kill again, we *know* what is going to happen. So we get a long backwards tracking shot from the apartment door, down one flight of stairs, around a corner and down another flight of stairs, through an entry hall, out a door, across a bustling street, then craning up to see more of the building. This would have been a difficult shot with a Steady-cam, only that wouldn’t be invented for another four years.
Here's the trick - the camera is on a jib arm for the stairs, then there is actually a cut when we leave the house which is covered by a man carrying a sack of potatoes walking in front of the camera. I call this a "Hitchcock Wipe". Spielberg used it in JAWS for the that cool scene on the beach when the Kittner Boy gets chomped by the shark.
Then we have a great scene where Rusk puts a victim’s body in a sack of potatoes that will be driven back to the farm where they came from - the pay off from that conversation earlier in the film that we never suspected was setting up this scene. And all of the evidence is gone, and Rusk is free and clear. He goes to pick his teeth with his tie pin... and it isn’t there. We get some great flash-cuts: the victim grabbed it while he was killing her! Rusk goes back to the potato truck, searches for the sack with the dead woman... and the truck starts up and drives away! This is a great suspense scene, with the *villain* in peril of being discovered... And it works! Rusk retrieves the tie pin, but now must escape the speeding potato truck.
As every woman he has ever known ends up a victim of the Neck Tie Killer, Blaney has no one else to turn to for help except his old pal Rusk... and Rusk turns him over to the police, where he is arrested and thrown in a cell. This is all done in a high overhead, turning Blaney into nothing more than a pawn.
Here's that shot:
Character Flaw:Blaney is an interesting protagonist - an angry, bitter, ex-war hero who manages to pick a fight with anyone who tries to help him or shows him pity. He has enough self-pity, no need for anyone else’s. But this leads to some great blow ups that get him fired and make him the prime suspect in his ex-wife’s murder. His character and character flaw are what make him the perfect suspect. This may be a thriller but it is still character related - and Blaney’s *character* and his emotional issues are directly related to the story being told.
One interesting element of the film is that we spend a great deal of time away from Blaney. Most Hitchcock films stayed with the protagonist for the majority of the scenes. This is true whether the film is NORTH BY NORTHWEST or REAR WINDOW. But here Blaney shares screen time with Rusk and the Detective. The three seem to have almost equal screen time.
There are hilarious scenes where the Detective must suffer through his wife’s gourmet cooking which help define his character. How do you pretend to enjoy the eel head soup? These scenes do more than provide a laugh, they show the Detective slowly beginning to believe that Blaney may not be guilty. He is a “pivot character” who begins as an antagonist chasing Blaney, but slowly changes sides and tries to find the evidence that will exonerate him. This happens in a swell scene where we see the Detective thinking in the courtroom after Blaney has been captured and found guilty of murder.
There’s a great scene where the Detective and his wife are discussing the dead woman in the potato truck, the killer had to pry open her rigored hand to get the tie pin, breaking each of her fingers... And his wife snaps a break stick in half. Ouch! This is done throughout the film - very clever stuff! Sound and image working together.
Twist Ends: The film works its way to a great traditional twist end and doesn’t waste a second of film time after the twist - it goes directly to closing credits. This is not a "Sixth Sense" twist that changes the entire film we have previously seen, but the sort of twist ending the Hitchcock Presents Show was famous for - in this case we have sort of a triple twist: Blaney escapes prison and goes to kill Rusk... but the person in Rusk's bed he beats with a crow bar ends up being the latest neck tie victim (in the novel it's Jean Marsh's character, in the film it's some hot naked woman)! There's a great shot after he gets done slamming the crow bar into the person's head when an arm falls from beneath the sheets - a woman's arm with too many bracelets. Twist! Just when Blaney realizes his mistake, the door opens - and it's the Detective. Twist! The Detective puts his fingers to his lips and hides... as the door opens *again* and it's Rusk with a trunk. But Rusk tries to pin it on Blaney. Twist! Who will the Detective arrest? And then we get our final little twist - kind of a Columbo Moment - when the Detective notes that Rusk isn't wearing a neck tie. For a moment there, we thought for sure Blaney was screwed!
There are some other great twists in the film - instead of just dumping information on the audience Anthony Shaffer and Hitchcock always seem to find a way to spring it on us. After we know that Blaney is the Neck Tie Killer there’s a great scene where Babs leaves the bar - in shock because she’s worried that Blaney might actually be the killer - and when she steps outside the scene becomes completely silent. She’s lost in thought. And when she moves her head - WHAM! - Rusk is right behind her! Great shock moment. Another example is when Blaney’s Air Force pal’s wife asks how Blaney’s ex-wife is doing - a great tense moment - and Blaney admits that she’s dead... and his friend’s wife grabs a newspaper with a front page story about the police searching for Blaney the Neck Tie Killer and shoves it in Blaney’s face and says: Because you killed her! Knocks Blaney back, and knocks us back as well. These are the people trying to help him - and they think he did it! Blaney really is a man with awful luck! Throughout the film, every piece of information is given to the audience in the most interesting way possible - through little twists and reversals that make FRENZY a consistently exciting film.
A great summation of Hitchcock's thrillers that also works as kind of a little tour of London and a behind the scenes of Covent Garden market. Lots of suspense, twists, and a fun look at what happens when you lose all of your friends in the divorce... except for the bad boys you used to hang out with as a bachelor. Great script by Shaffer, great cinematography by Gilbert Taylor. Marred by iffy music by Ron Goodwin (replacing Bernard Herrmann after he had a falling out with Hitch). Hitchcock's best film in the post-PSYCHO era (after he began to believe all of those critics that called him a genius - and made mostly cruddy films). A modern film, that holds up really well.
- Bill.
The other Fridays With Hitchcock.
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