Frenzy (1972)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Alec McCowen, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Billie Whitelaw, Clive Swift, Vivien Merchant, Bernard Cribbins, Michael Bates, Jean Marsh. [R]

Hitch’s penultimate film is a sex-and-murder thriller in the Psycho tradition (with a heavy dollop of the “wrongfully-accused man” angle that is practically the director’s bread-and-butter), as urbane serial killer Foster runs rampant through London with a mind toward rape and necktie murder, the circumstantial evidence of which implicates his unknowing pal Finch. Never quite gripping due to the archly British coldness of the characters and the explicitly lurid theatrics interrupting its sporting style and fits of off-key humor (Merchant’s extravagant culinary experiments being particularly laugh-out-loud funny), but it contains a few remarkable sequences in the master’s oeuvre, including a stylish tracking-camera withdrawal during a key murder sequence and the subsequent suspense in the back of a potato lorry as Foster tries to recover a crucial piece of evidence. The final act is illogical to the point of distraction, but the concluding segment (and droll curtain line) ends it all on a high note. Scripted by Anthony Shaffer from the Arthur La Bern novel, “Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square.”

71/100