Frenzy (1972 Alfred Hitchcock)

Hitch returns to England for the first time in three decades - actually I forgot the 1955 Man Who Knew Too Much - and opens his thriller just like one of his early ones - with a crowd of onlookers (himself included) gossiping about a corpse they're seen in the Thames. As it unfolds, we immediately are led to assume that the necktie murderer is Jon Finch (who has an unfortunate habit of rolling his r's) who is cleverly positioned behind two gentlemen who are discussing the murder in a pub. Hitch is as usual leading us exactly where he wants - for example when the couple later are holed up in a Bayswater hotel, he focuses on the suspicious hotel staff, then the police, choosing not to cut back to our couple at all. And again later, when we find ourselves inadvertently siding with the killer.

Forty-three years after Hitch dazzled the audience with pioneering tricks with sound in Blackmail, he's at it again here - in the scene where Massey walks out of the pub, all the sound fades, then just Barry Foster's voice comes in (before all sound returns) - chilling and brilliant (and foreshadowing the action). (He does it again after her murder.)

Is there also a dash of the French (Truffaut, Chabrol), who Hitch influenced in the first place? It's a bit like he's bouncing them back on themselves, delivering, for example, perhaps his nastiest murder in a scene completely without music.

Barbara Leigh-Hunt. Stills courtesey of http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/

And for some reason, the hilarious scenes with detective Alec McCowen sampling wife Vivien Merchant's horrible cordon bleu cooking made me think Hitch put it in there for Buñuel, of whom he was a big fan.

Michael Bates funny envying Alec McCowen's full English breakfast.

Misses a good score, unfortunately (Ron Goodwin); Hitchcock would have been alive to hear Herrmann's last masterpiece, Taxi Driver - do you think he did, and thought "Shit!"

I remember my Mum telling me about the scene with the body holding the giveaway pin, which occurs in a beautifully funny black comedy moment (again, with a flavour of Buñuel?) The ending also is really funny.

Rest of cast: Barry Foster, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Bernard Cribbins, Billie Whitelaw, Jean Marsh, Clive Swift. Shot by Gilbert Taylor and edited by John Jympson.