By the time Alfred Hitchcock's second-to-last picture came out in 1972, the censorship restrictions under which he had laboured during his long career had eased up. Now he could give full sway to his lurid fantasies, and that may explain why Frenzy is the director's most violent movie by far--outstripping even Psycho for sheer brutality. Adapted by playwright Anthony Shaffer, the story concerns a series of rape-murders committed by suave fruit-merchant Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), who gets his kicks from throttling women with a necktie. This being a Hitchcock thriller,... suspicion naturally falls on the wrong man--ill-tempered publican Richard Blaney (Jon Finch). Enter Inspector Oxford from New Scotland Yard (Alex McCowan), who thrashes out the finer points of the case with his wife (Vivian Merchant), whose tireless enthusiasm for indigestible delicacies like quail with grapes supplies a classic running gag.Frenzy was the first film Hitchcock had shot entirely in his native Britain since Jamaica Inn (1939), and many contemporary critics used that fact to account for what seemed to them a glorious return to form after a string of Hollywood duds (Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz). Hitchcock specialists are often less wild about it, judging the detective plot mechanical and the oh-so-English tone insufferable. But at least three sequences rank among the most skin-crawling the maestro ever put on celluloid. There is an astonishing moment when the camera backs away from a room in which a murder is occurring, down the stairs, through the front door and then across the street to join the crowd milling indifferently on the pavement. There is also the killer's nerve-wracking attempt to retrieve his tiepin from a corpse stuffed into a sack of potatoes. Finally, there is one act of strangulation so prolonged and gruesome it verges on the pornographic. Was the veteran film-maker a rampant misogynist as feminist observers have frequently charged? Sit through this appalling scene if you dare and decide for yourself. --Peter Matthews [show more]
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play Digitally Remastered In modern-day London a sex criminal known as the Necktie Murderer has the police on alert and in typical Hitchcock fashion their trail is leading to an innocent man who must now elude the law and prove his innocence by finding the real murderer Jon Finch Alec McCowen and Barry Foster head the British cast in this thriller that alternates suspense scenes with moments of Hitchcock&39;s distinctive black humour Frenzy marked Hitchcock&39;s return to his native England after almost twenty years A morbid blend of humour and horror Hitchcock makes the film intensely suspenseful and at times forces the audience to identify with the vicious murderer Actors Jon Finch Alec McCowen Barry Foster Billie Whitelaw Anna Massey Barbara Leigh-Hunt Bernard Cribbins Vivien Merchant George Tovey Clive Swift Michael Bates Jean Marsh John Boxer Madge Ryan Elsie Randolph & Alfred HitchcockDirector Alfred HitchcockCertificate 18 years and overYear 1972Screen Widescreen 169 AnamorphicLanguages English - Dolby Digital (20) MonoAdditional Languages GermanSubtitles English for the hard of hearing ; German ; Swedish ; Danish ; Finnish ; Dutch ; NorwegianClosed Captions YesDuration 1 hour and 51 minutes (approx)
Alfred Hitchcock's first British film since 'Stage Fright' (1950) stars Barry Foster as market trader Robert Rusk, a psychopathic killer who strangles women with ties. Suspicion falls, however, on the innocent Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), after Rusk kills Blaney's ex-wife Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) and his current girlfriend (Anna Massey). Set-pieces include Rusk's desperate attempt to prise an incriminating tie-pin out of one of his victim's hands (now rigid with rigor mortis) and a leisurely tracking shot up a flight of stairs to alight upon a grisly murder in progress.
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