Frenzy [Blu-ray]

Droll and dark Hitchcock suspense film
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).

The performances are uniformly excellent. The fact that Hitch chose stage actors and lesser known British film actors for this film gives it a bit more grit and reality than his earlier films. Anthony Schaffer's script plays with the routine cliches of suspense films. A...

The Master's Last Psychological Thriller
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.

The film revolves around a series of grisly strangulations of women occurring around London that have the police totally baffled. The killer's choice is a necktie, which pretty much leaves the door wide-open, since almost every man there wears a necktie. We are then introduced to Richard...

Review of 2001 DVD and 2012 Blu-ray
*** UPDATED OCT-08-2013 ***

Director Alfred Hitchcock's second last film is a suspenseful mystery-thriller about an unlucky bartender who is framed for murder by a cunning and psychotic villain. This is one of Hitch's best films, with many trademarks of the master of suspense: his cameo, the "wrong man" theme, the occasional black humor, and voyeuristic camera movements. But this is a fairly atypical Hitchcock film as well. Set in a working-class London neighborhood, "Frenzy" is quite far apart from the elegant and urbane settings of his earlier films with actors like Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Instead of Hollywood glossiness, Hitch gives the film a fairly realistic, decidedly unglamorous look and feel. And he even goes far in portraying ugliness. This film has one horrific murder scene in which the depiction of brutality and evil reaches a new height in Hitchcock's career, earning his first R-rating from the MPAA. (His 1960 film "Psycho" would be his second R-rated...

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