Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

SanSanSan The only thing that this movie has in common with Hitchcock's past work is his misogyny--never before displayed so relentlessly, so sleazily, and with such absence of redeeming features. Come the screen liberties of the seventies, dirty old men of the cinema could really let it rip, and finally even Hitch got to do a giant close-up of a tit. Bless! The Master of Suspense finally got his suspenders down--and oh, my eyes, my eyes!The screenplay is tragicomically bad, a cringe-fest from start to finish, both technically (if you need to teach Clunky Exposition 101, look no further) and, supremely, in content. In the first five minutes two men tell us the murder of women has a "silver lining"--they are getting raped first. Oh joy. The characterization of women, with somewhat of an exception of Babs (who'll nevertheless get raped, murdered, and humiliated post mortem), is invariably awful--they are either monsters or treated as such, even when there's no clue why that should be so (Blaney's ex-wife being a case in point. Her sins, apparently, are that she divorced Blaney AND became a successful businesswoman.) The secretary, played by Jean Marsh, is also grossly insulted by Blaney ("she should be paired up with a 700 pound Japanese wrestler to iron out her creases" WTF?), out of the blue, she did nothing to him. Even the cameo couple we see in the beginning in Blaney's wife's matrimonial office gives us the woman as the monstrous shrew and the man as her hapless prey. The inspector's pretentious wannabe gourmet-cook wife isn't a monster but a standing joke, so forced and badly played it's torture to watch their scenes.I feel bad for the many fine actors in this who were probably chuffed to work with Hitchcock, just to find themselves neck deep in a garbage truck. Definitely a top contender if not the winner in a Worst Movie By A Great Director competition.

Antonius Block I've always liked 'Frenzy', Hitchcock's second to last movie, filmed when he was 73. The London pub and market scenes in Covent Garden always grab me from the start, and I love the dialogue between Jon Finch and both Anna Massey and Barry Foster. Finch plays a down-on-his-luck barman who's just been "given the push" (fired) from his job for drinking too much, Massey is his feisty co-worker, and Foster his charming and kind friend who tries to help him. Hanging over London is the "Necktie Murderer", as we see in the early shots of a nude woman floating in the Thames. When Finch pays a visit to his ex-wife (Barbara Leigh-Hunt), things take a downward turn, but I won't say anything further.There are several excellent shots worth noting. The one where Hitchcock slowly backs the camera down the stairwell and back out into the street, after the killer and his next victim are entering his apartment, is brilliant. The fumbling around in the moving potato truck, leading to breaking fingers where rigor mortis has set in has a gruesome and morbidly absurd feel to it. I also love the small moment when at the trial, Hitchcock places the camera outside the courtroom, and lets us hear snippets of the judge's pronouncement when the door opens. The film feels eminently British which I enjoyed, and distinctly Hitchcock, as he slips in some droll humor in the form of a detective (Alex McCowen) and his wife (Vivien Merchant), who cooks him unappetizing French haute cuisine while he craves traditional British fare. For the first time, Hitchcock also uses brief nudity in a few scenes mostly to heighten the garish and horrifying murders, and maybe to please his inner voyeur. There are moments which made me smile (a margarita being too exotic a drink comes to mind), and others which made me cringe (a gentleman saying to a barmaid that being raped before being strangled is akin to every cloud having a silver lining, and her smiling about it). The middle portion of the film is not quite as strong as I remembered it, but overall, a solid thriller, and underrated in Hitchcock's oeuvre.

jimbo-53-186511 A man finds himself on the run from police when his ex-wife is found dead and his ex-wife's employee spots her husband leaving the crime scene. Her husband isn't responsible for the crime and must fight to prove his innocence.For the most part, Frenzy is quite a darkly plotted crime film and is notably more risqué than many of his previous films; we witness a rape and an actresses bare breasts exposed which were not the sort of things that you'd normally see in a Hitchcock film. These things undoubtedly make Frenzy a memorable film, but possibly not entirely for the right reasons....Frenzy is quite slow-paced, but I feel that it may be deliberately slow (it kind of establishes Blaney as something of a lovable rogue which perhaps helps to get the audience on his side). The film does suffer from being a bit soapy at times (many of the scenes involving Blaney, Babs and Forsythe felt a little unnecessary and for me kind of got in the way of moving things along).Another thing that I found slightly disappointing about this film is that it isn't played out as a mystery film and is one that is more about a wrongly accused man fighting to prove his innocence. The way that the story is played out was effective enough to hold my interest (in the sense that I wanted to see how Blaney would finally expose Rusk). But personally, I would have preferred it if the killer's identity had been kept a secret and the audience then had to figure out who the killer was (this to me would have made it far more exciting). However, Hitchcock and screenwriter Anthony Schaffer were working from a novel so I can't really criticise either of them for the story that was presented to me.Frenzy is also probably one of the most tonally inconsistent films that I've seen from Hitchcock; the basic plot is quite dark and yes it contains that one brutal scene, but then he also seems to try some comedic touches to the film; the scene with the Inspector and his wife and her rather odd choices of cuisine or the scene where Rusk is in the potato truck with the corpse. It's possible that Hitchcock was trying to counter-balance a lot of the grim plot mechanics with some light-hearted relief. Although this seems a bit odd when watching the film, the two conflicting tones do serve each other fairly well.Hitchcock's camera work is flawless as always and observant viewers will spot Hitchcock's cameo role in this film (he's actually featured in more than one scene in this film). Frenzy has enough strengths to make it worth watching, but this is not classic Hitchcock in my book.

NBates1 Alfred Hitchcock's FRENZY was released in 1972, notably later than his previous masterpieces of the 50s/60s, so it is much more graphic and sexual than all of them.The story is quite engaging, but it never does scare someone, because I did not really feel the atmosphere one supposedly feels when watching a Hitchcock thriller (such as Psycho, Rear Window, etc.). The movie does contain a rape scene (that was graphic considering this was in the 70s), where Rusk sexually assaults his friend Blaney's ex-wife in her office and then strangles her with a neck- tie. There is quite a bit of nudity in this film as well.The musical score was nothing special, but the camera work was good. The performance were good as well, and Jon Finch did an impressive job as the lead. The others were effective.However, you never really feel he is a wrong man arrested, as he is extremely casual about it; unlike Cary Grant's character in North by Northwest who tries his best to flee.Hitchcock's directing was great as usual.All in all, the film was interesting and the plot was great and engaging (and humorous at times), but I never really felt the atmosphere of a Hitchcock thriller.