cover image Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: 
The Last Masterpiece

Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: The Last Masterpiece

Raymond Foery. Scarecrow, $40 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8108-7755-9

After a string of flops and in need of a hit, Alfred Hitchcock returned to his native London in 1971 to make Frenzy, his darkest film since Psycho. Recounting in at times overwhelming detail the film’s journey from page to screen, through postproduction and the arduous promotion circuit that followed, Foery adds little to the already voluminous scholarship that exists on the Master of Suspense. After Torn Curtain and Topaz performed so poorly, Hitchcock was in a professional slump and desperate for material that excited him. Arthur La Bern’s 1966 novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, detailing the exploits of a serial killer in London who raped and murdered young woman à la a modern-day Jack the Ripper, was just such a book. Goodbye soon became Frenzy, with a screenplay by playwright Anthony Shaffer. Like many of the best Hitchcock films, Frenzy features a man on the run trying to clear his name, as well as a murder, though the strangulation of Babs Milligan with a necktie is more brutal than most Hitchcock deaths. Shooting in London represented the first time the director had returned for more than a holiday since 1939, and he took full advantage, staging several outdoor scenes. While Foery’s shot-by-shot analysis of the Frenzy shooting schedule does grow tedious, it offers more new insights than the chapters devoted to rehashing Hitchcock’s mastery of montage and mise-en-scene. (July)