Frenzy (1972)

It was time for Alfred Hitchcock to get mean. His string of 60s thrillers (Psycho, The Birds) had propelled him to even greater fame yet somehow his follow ups were dating his image to the times before he would walk 39 Steps with a falsely accused man, or swim in a Lifeboat with a Nazi. And then comes 1972's Frenzy, a suburban thriller about a murderer who derives sexual pleasure from strangling women, and the man who takes the fall. And what a feeling it is to have Hitchcock grab us by the throat one last time and force us into a demented game of gaudy ties and potato musk.

Frenzy feels like a Hitchcock thriller gone sour, our leading man played by John Finch is just as likable if not less charismatic than Barry Foster's lip-biting lady-killer. Immediately upon meeting him he's firing his mouth at anyone unfortunate enough to cross his sight, sneering at his soon-to-be dead ex wife, raising his fist at the country that dumped him into war and then dumped him penniless on the streets. There's so much delight to be derived from how painfully obvious he sticks out as a potential killer. Whereas Foster quietly slips into the backdrop of London's cobblestone streets and fruit markets, picking women like apples off a tree. In the tradition of Psycho we're given a shocking murder scene but unlike the former's quick cuts, Hitchcock holds on the violently intimate assault, showing every drop of sweat hang over Foster's delirious eyes as he rapes and then strangles Barbara Leigh Hunt with his necktie.

It is remarkable then that such a potently vicious scene could be in a movie that is also dementedly humorous. In classic Hitchcock fashion he teases the characters and the audience, setting his monster loose in ordinary scenes and watching him charismatically weave his way around Finch and the incompetent British police force. The inventiveness in the setpieces which Hitchcock comes up with is also to be noted, thankfully sparing us from the (honestly unnecessarily vile) details of the first murder and instead finding clever ways to skirt around it. Like a shot solemnly pulling away from Foster luring a woman into his apartment, as if the film itself is ashamed it ever indulged in such grizzly form. He even combines the inventiveness and humor in a stunt where Foster jumps to retrieve a piece of evidence which almost verges on slapstick as he fights against time and rigor mortis.

Frenzy does unfortunately stumble its way through the third act, condensing a lot of plot into a short amount of time. And Finch's delightful asshole of a character doesn't get to crack his whip as much as he did before, instead being traded for other characters that aren't as interesting like the bumbling police chief and his wife who has but one punchline to her name. But even then Frenzy's unique blend of horror, humor, and intrigue makes it quietly poke out like a dead woman's foot between the rest of Hitchcock's filmography. It's the film he's secretly waiting for you to get to; the film that will make you finally see the giddy look of Bob Rusk, the necktie murderer, behind his eyes.