Review – Frenzy

This is one of the ickiest movies Alfred Hitchcock ever made. The plot is standard Hitch: a lust killer with a necktie-strangling fetish is loose in London. Suspicion falls on a recently-unemployed asshole who happens to have connections to some of the victims. Do I even need to tell you that the actual culprit is someone else? I found a couple of things about this movie particularly disturbing. One was that the violence – particularly one rape/killing – was especially graphic. But even worse, the movie seemed to be trying for a sense of humor about the awful crimes. Though the English have a solid history of making successful, droll comedies (such as Kind Hearts and Coronets) about the most gruesome of subjects, the joke here falls flat. Typical of the problem is the scene in which the villain finds himself stuck in the back of a potato truck trying to wrestle his lapel pin out of the rigor-stricken fingers of one of his naked victims. I suppose it was meant to evoke a nervous chuckle, but all it made me wish for was the sudden reanimation of the corpse to exact a little choking revenge on the asshole as he burbles out one last “Bob’s yer uncle.” Needless to say, I didn’t get my wish. See if desperate