2. Frenzy (1972)
In the midst of Covent Garden - a vegetable and fruit selling place of London - women are being savagely raped and strangled by neckties. We know from the beginning that Robert Rusk, a fruit seller, is culpable but a lot of circumstantial evidence has gathered around his friend Richard. Richard's ex wife Brenda runs a dating service which Rusk was kicked out of for roughing up his dates. He makes a pass at Brenda and when she declines, he rapes and strangles her - getting away with it and further implicating Richard in all the killings. Rusk also rapes and kills Richard's current girlfriend - Babs. There then follows a famous scene in which Rusk has to roll around in the back of a truck carrying potatoes to retrieve his tie pin that is stuck in Bab's dead hand. Richard is locked up but Oxford - a policeman on the case begins to suspect that they have the wrong man. Richard escapes from prison and Oxford knows he has gone to Rusk's for revenge purposes. Richard thinks Rusk is lying in bed and he bludgeons the figure only to find out it is another victim of Rusks. Oxford makes his way inside and finds Richard with a crow bar beside the body protesting his innocence. Rusk comes into the room dragging a large crate to put the woman's body into. When confronted with both suspects, Oxford utters the immortal words 'Mr Rusk, you are not wearing your tie". Hitchcock's penultimate film, which many consider a return to form for the director after the disappointing Topaz and Torn Curtain, Frenzy is a dark and disturbing horror film which features the familiar Hitchcockian theme of an innocent man being overwhelmed by circumstantial evidence. The identity of the murderer in Frenzy is known from the early part of the film and he is a monstrous, perverted character who rapes and kills women with impunity and thinks he can get away with it. That is where the tension in the film lies - will Rusk get his comeuppance? It was also the first Hitchcock film to feature nudity and strong sexual violence. There is a fair amount of ghoulish humour in the film - such as the retrieval of Rusk's tie pin, but Hitchcock also plays it straight as we can see from another scene. Rusk invites a woman up to his flat to rape and kill her. The camera pans out of the apartment, down the stairs, out onto the footpath and it widens to include the whole street. This emphasises that you never know what is going on behind closed doors and a murder could be taking place anywhere. Hitchcock used stage actors for the roles which is good because it makes it more authentically British and big screen names would have detracted from the suspense with their baggage of fame. It is a very assured piece of film making from the Master. One wonders what other wonderful horror films could have come from Hitchcock had he explored that genre more in depth.