Frenzy

A London serial killer is strangling women with a necktie. All evidence points to Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a recently fired barman last seen near where his ex-wife was raped and murdered, and he's got a bad temper and a drinking problem. The problem: he didn't do it. The real killer is a friend of Blaney's, Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), a market salesman with a warped sexual compulsion beneath his charming personality. 

Frenzy, a wickedly entertaining and morbidly funny film, finds Alfred Hitchcock drawing on the man wrongfully accused trope, but instead of concentrating on the man-on-the-run elements like in previous films, he revels in the delicious irony of all the clues pointing to an innocent man while nothing incriminating is tied to the real criminal.

 
It is probably Hitchcock's most warped movie, or at least his most graphically violent and sexually explicit. We witness the murder of Blaney's ex, and there are close-ups of the tie tightening around her throat and of her terrified face as she gags and struggles. The bodies of other victims are found in the river and the back of a potato truck, naked, bruised, pale, and stiff.

Most of the humor comes from dark irony. The film opens with long, sweeping shots of the London cityscape and proceeds to an outdoor press conference where a government official boasts about efforts to clean up pollution in the Thames River, only for someone to cry out there's a dead woman floating by.

Later, Rusk, looking for a piece of incriminating evidence in a victim's hand, climbs into the potato truck, getting knocked around by all the sacks and growing increasingly frustrated and desperate; it's a sequence that's as humorous as it is tense.

The public, instead of being shocked or repulsed by the murders, are fascinated by them, treating them as just the latest piece of gossip. One person notes how the city could use a little excitement.

More humor comes in the dinner scenes between Chief Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen) and his wife; he elaborates on the case while hiding his disgust for her cooking. Given that the film is about appetites - Rusk's depraved carnal hungers - it makes sense that the detective who eventually figures out the truth is the one who has trouble swallowing what's put in front of him.

Hitchcock succeeds with the casting. Finch as Blaney is not likeable like Jimmy Stewart, smooth like Cary Grant, nor trustworthy like Henry Fonda; he's unpleasant, quick to anger, self-pitying, and drunk at the worst times. It's easy for the police and public to accept he's the culprit. Unlike other Hitchcock protagonists, he does little to help his own cause, content to go into hiding rather than find the real killer as audiences might expect a hero to do.

Foster as Rusk, on the other hand, is charming and personable (at least when he's not killing women). When Blaney is fired and homeless, Rusk offers him money, grapes, and a tip on an upcoming horse race (which Blaney is too proud to borrow money to bet on). We even meet his mother. As a killer, when things don't go his way, he resolves problems by taking action and getting his hands dirty.

Hitchcock turns the screws at key moments, including the potato truck scene and the murder of Blaney’s ex-wife. Later, Rusk leads another victim up to his apartment, and when the door closes on the frame, the camera pulls back, down the stairs, and outside.

We know what's going to happen, and we're helpless to stop it.