Frenzy [DVD]

Hitchcock’s penultimate film and his first made in England for 20 years, ‘Frenzy’ was concerned with many of the same preoccupations that dominated his earlier work including those around the motifs of the doppelganger, the wrong man and violent sexual deviance. Post-Carnaby London is terrorised by a rapist-murderer known as the ‘Necktie Killer’. An innocent ex-R.A.F. pilot, down on his luck, is accused of the murders and condemned to life imprisonment but a police inspector continues to have doubts about his guilt. Mixing black-humour and slapstick with disturbing sexual violence, the film received the critical praise denied his three previous films but was not a commercial success. Cast includes Jon Finch, Alec McCowen, Barry Foster and Barbara Leigh-Hunt. Screenplay by Anthony Schaffer, based on Arthur Le Bern’s novel ‘ Goodbye Piccadilly, Hello Leicester Square’. Photographed by Gil Taylor. Edited by John Jympson. Music by Ron Goodwin.