Droll and dark Hitchcock suspense film, March 18, 2001

Think about this.The man was 70 when he directed it---6000 miles away from home.For someone who had enjoyed the comfort and routine of shuttling each day from Universal to Bellagio Road for the last twenty years,this was pretty radical---and it couldn't have been any picnic sitting all day on those wet,chilly London streets either. I never appreciated all of this at the age of 21 when I was running "Frenzy" as a 16mm college rental.At that time,I enjoyed a good,tense---maybe not top drawer,but certainly up to standard---Hitchcock thriller.Having seen it many times in the intervening years, I have modified my opinion---"Frenzy" is a GREAT Hitchcock thriller.I won't say "one of his best",because how much room do we have in a pantheon that includes "Shadow Of A Doubt","Notorious","Strangers On A Train" and so many others?Let's just say that "Frenzy" is utterly different from the rest----another bold stroke...

For the first time in twenty-plus years, Alfred Hitchcock returned to his native England to make what turned out to be his final psychological thriller FRENZY. Despite a series of only modestly successful films since his 1963 triumph with THE BIRDS, Hitchcock had not lost his touch when he was handed Anthony Shaffer's fine screenplay (based on the Arthur LaBern book "Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leicester Square"). And although his approach to sex and violence is more explicit here (thanks to the ease in censorship restrictions that happened only a few years before), Hitchcock still delivers a film quite typical of his work--suspenseful, chilling, and often quite funny in a blackly humorous way.

Frenzy was a homecoming of sorts as it was Hitch's first film shot in the UK since he left during the 40's. I would disagree with those who claim that Frenzy can't stand with Hitch's best work; Hitch's droll and dark sense of humor change what could have been a run of the mill thriller into a minor masterpiece. The best bits in Frenzy are every bit as startling and powerful as those in Rear Window, Vertigo and North by Northwest. Although his wife Alma's heart attack couldn't have informed the pre-production stages of the script and film, it certainly had an impact on the atomsphere captured in the film. There is an underlying darkness here only hinted at before (most explicitly in The Birds, Vertigo and Marnie).