8. Frenzy (1972)
"Mr Rusk, you're not wearing your tie". Hitchcock's penultimate film, considered the last of his great films, Frenzy is an absolute riot from beginning to end. The action is set in Covent Garden in London, where fruit seller Robert Rusk is going around raping women and strangling them with a necktie. A lot of circumstantial evidence has built up around his friend Richard Blaney who is jailed after several murders involving women close to him. Detective Oxford, the investigating Officer soon realises the wrong man has been jailed and the race is on to catch the killer before he murders anyone else. The Master of Suspense is back in action with full force. The scene with Rusk in a truck full of potatoes trying to rescue his tie pin from a dead woman's hand is gripping and darkly humorous. There were no major stars in the film and therefore no narrative compromises. There is nudity, violence and swearing which Hitchcock had never really bothered with before. At the beginning of the movie there is a violent rape and strangulation scene. But Hitchcock does not over play the violence. The second murder scene shows Rusk escorting a young woman to his flat and remarking "You know, you're just my type". When the door closes, the camera pans away and floats down the stairs, out the door and across the street where we see busy people just doing their every day thing. Hitchcock does not need to go graphic to chill you to your marrow.