Frenzy (1972) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron loosen their ties as they discuss “Frenzy.”

The Picture:

Picture Title: Frenzy

Written by:

Screenplay by Anthony Shaffer

Based on the novel “Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square” by Arthur La Bern

Starring: Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Anna Massey, Alec McCowen, Vivien Merchant, Billie Whitelaw, Clive Swift and Bernard Cribbins

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Year Released: 1972

Our Favourite Trivia:

DIRECTOR CAMEO: One of the members of the crowd listening to the speaker on the river bank.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock originally planned to do his cameo as the body floating in the river. A dummy was even constructed to do the shot. The plans were changed, and a female body, a victim of The Necktie Murderer, was used instead. The dummy of Hitchcock was used in the typically humorous trailer hosted by Hitchock.

During shooting, Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s wife and longtime collaborator Alma had a stroke. As a result, some sequences were shot without Hitchcock on the set, so he could tend to his wife.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s shooting schedule allowed filming to begin at 8 a.m. and finish at 6 p.m. every day while on-location in Covent Garden in London. One day during filming, Hitchcock was in the middle of finishing a take when a union representative showed up to inform him that it was 6:15 p.m., and that they had to stop filming. Hitchcock became furious and threatened to walk off the set, and film this movie back in Hollywood. After that, no more union representatives were allowed on the set

Much of the location filming was done in and around Covent Garden, and was an homage to the London of Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s childhood. The son of a Covent Garden merchant, Hitchcock filmed several key scenes showing the area as the working produce market that it was. Aware that the area’s days as a market were numbered, Hitchcock wanted to record the area as he remembered it. According to the “Making of” featurette on the DVD, an elderly man who remembered Hitchcock’s father as a dealer in the vegetable market came to visit the set during filming, and was treated to lunch by Hitchcock.

Midway through the movie, there is a famous continuous shot in which the camera backs away from the door of Rusk’s upper-floor apartment as he is taking his latest victim inside and descends the staircase, seemingly without a cut, to the ground level, out the building’s front door, and then to the opposite side of the street. The interiors were shot with an overhead track in a studio, and there is an imperceptible cut as a man passes by the front door, carrying a sack of potatoes. This is subtly blended into a new shot of the camera pulling away from the building exterior that was used on-location. The sound on the exterior portion of the shot was also increased so that the audience would subconsciously think that no one would be able to hear the woman scream for help.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia found this movie so disturbing that she would not allow her children to see it for many years.

This is the only Sir Alfred Hitchcock movie to carry an “18” certificate in the U.K., or receive an “X” rating after the “X” age restriction was moved from sixteen to eighteen in 1971.

The Random Draw for Next Picture:

Next up, we’ll be discussing “The Wrong Man”

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