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Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy is a superior film!

posted 12 years ago by Saving_Private_Celluloid
14 replies | jump to latest

So why is the average IMDB rating higher for Peeping Tom?
It's not that I disliked Peeping Tom. On the contrary, I liked both films, but Frenzy to me is just a better example of the genre.
Unlike Peeping Tom, Frenzy possesses a wicked sense of humour which serves to lighten the mood & prevent the film from becoming too morbid, plus it actually features plot twists, something every good thriller should include.
It's also my opinion that the characterisation in Frenzy is probably the biggest difference between the two films, which I won't bother to elaborate on.
Very sorry to offend fans of the film. In the spirit of fairness, please feel free to call me an idiot & provide enlightenment on why Peeping Tom is in fact superior.

[–] Steve Crook 12 years ago

There is plenty of humour in Peeping Tom as well.

Is Peeping Tom a thriller? Or a drama? Or a psychological-thriller or a psychodrama? It's hard to categorise.

There are thrills and plot twists in both films

Steve

[–] horn-5 12 years ago

I don't know if it will be of any help with your claim but here is what Alfred Hitchcock had to say about "Frenzy" and the function of humor (from Richard Schickel's great tv series and expanded book - The Men Who Made the Movies):

"Irony usually takes the form of a joke. You know, it's like the opening of "Frenzy." Here's a man talking about the purity of the water, of the Thames River, no pollution, and along comes a body floating. Well, there's a complete irony there, but it's comic irony. At the same time, it's making a plot point: there are necktie murders going on in London.

I think in suspense an audeince wants to have a little relief and change of pace and a lark if necessay. But, you see, in "Frenzy", you get the wife of the inspector talking over the plot with her cooking and the problems of having to stomach her cooking. But, really, the audience are being nursed along. Petted and worried about so that they laugh while pieces of plot are being thrust into their minds. But we deal with them gently. And in understatement. Understatement."

For whatever it is worth,

Us mortals would have said along comes a floating body. Hitchcock says a body floating. Viva Hitchcock difference.

Les

[–] Ryu_Darkwood 12 years ago

For me Peeping Tom is the superior movie because of that whole aspect of voyeurism/scopophilia. This movie directly confronts you as the viewer with your own distasteful need to see the horrific images that Mark makes.

Frenzy was a great movie as well, but more because it was higly entertaining than the issues it raised.

[–] OnlyRocknRoll 12 years ago

What I think is so interesting about Frenzy is that a lot of people don't seem to be aware of it. The TV is constantly barraging the public with Psycho and The Birds or Marnie. Of Mr. Hitchcocks work I far prefer Frenzy.

However, I think that Peeping Tom is the better film. It's far more deeply, psychologically disturbing. Unfortunately, books and films in this genre never satisfy because they rarely give enough information about cause, motive, personal history of what makes a person do these things. The killers don't seem to understand either. Or, don't want to tell what happened to them either. And, the families or caretakers that produced these people don't want to accept the responsibility for what they caused.

_______________________________________
"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??!!"

Maximus Decimus Meridius

[–] boogles 11 years ago

Yep, Frenzy tends to get overlooked in Hitch's work. A shame, as I would put it into my top 10 of Hitch's films.

Peeping Tom and Frenzy are quite different though. Frenzy it seems to be all about the terrible crime that killer commits(and I am not talking about the murders). Peeping Tom was more about voyeurism.

[–] andrewbanks 11 years ago

I was wondering whether Alfred Hitchcock cast Anna Massey in 'Frenzy' because he had seen her in 'Peeping Tom'.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Matthew 7:12)

[–] Tashtago 11 years ago

Frenzy is better. I found Peeping Tom more one dimensional and at times clumsy. Would Mark have really left the body in the trunk? And the mother showing up in his room in the dark that seemed a little ridiculous when all she ends up saying to him is leave my daughter alone. Earlier scenes tend to make the viewer think she's onto something. The police in Peeping Tom are also disappointing and actually ineffectual and dull. I loved the subplot in Frenzy of the Scotland Yard inspector tolerating his wife's cooking. All in all Frenzy is a more varied,entertaining, but equally disturbing movie.

[–] ilon 11 years ago

Frenzy is from 1972. I'm not saying that it matters that much, but it does.

[–] mnbush 10 years ago

I think Peeping Tom is a better film simply because I think Hitchcock ruined Frenzy. He is such a misogynist that he couldn't help but pose the female victims with ridiculous faces in that film. I really respected his directorial talents until I saw that movie. I was so disappointed.

Peeping Tom portrayed a disturbed human being. It was very realistic and, in that, made it very creepy.

[–] newguyindc2001 10 years ago

Why do we have to decide which film is "better"? They are both good, entertaining films.

[–] thomas-begen-194-976045 9 years ago

I just watched "Peeping Tom." Actually, I find "Frenzy" much more realistic in its breakdown of how an innocent man can be accused and convicted of murder based on circumstantial evidence; and in the capture of the real killer by the inspector at the end. Compared with most of Hitchcock's work, "Frenzy" is as realistic as Realism can be.

Furthermore, I have read the reason the victims were posed with what you call "ridiculous faces" is because it actually occurs in strangulation victims. I'm not an expert but I don't believe Hitchcock was doing it for purely comical or misogynistic reasons (not that I really care that much if he was). I say all of this as someone who is deeply conflicted by Hitchcock's directing, casting choices, and often overly complicated plots.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Its funny about Frenzy. I was around in 1972 when it came out, and it was like a "surprise comeback for Hitchcock," getting all these great reviews and landing on a lot of "Ten Best of 1972" lists. Hitchcock had been assumed to be "over" after a string of weak films after Psycho(even The Birds had gotten some bad reviews); critics thought Hitch was simply too old and sick to ever make a good film again.

But Frenzy changed all that.

And yet, indeed, all these years later, Frenzy isn't talked about much as a Hitchcock classic...and Peeping Tom, largely through the efforts of Martin Scorsese, is better known and revered.

I think Frenzy is, ultimately, equally creepy to Peeping Tom...and far more entertaining.

Here's a key: as with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, Hitchcock cast the lesser-known Barry Foster as Bob Rusk so that the killer is actually a person you LIKE. At least, when he isn't raping and killing women-- Bob Rusk is funny, cheery, a good friend("Bob's Your Uncle"), everybody's pal. And THEN we learn of his darkside. The killer in Peeping Tom is pretty much a creepy, emotionally stunted freak from the get-go; we learn WHY(his father's tortuous experiments in fear) and we feel sorry for him, but we are never really interested in him as we are with Hitchcock's far more charming Bob Rusk. Perkins as Norman Bates had a real difference: for most of the film to new viewers, Norman doesn't seem to be the killer at all. Boehm we know is the killer in Peeping Tom from the very beginning. Rusk doesn't reveal himself for 30 minutes, so we have a half hour to get to like him before Hitchcock pulls the switch.

Versus Peeping Tom, both Psycho and Frenzy have "big set-pieces" that take the movie out of the story -- the murders and the fruit cellar in Psycho, the main murder and the potato truck scene in Frenzy(along with a dazzling staircase shot.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hitchcock outpaces Peeping Tom with Psycho and Frenzy because he had a greater sense of entertainment value, more skill with set-pieces, and a great sense of "how to cast a likeable psycho."

But Peeping Tom inhabits its own historic space as a too-close, too-personal look at the sexual drive of a psychopathic killer who preys on women, with all the "camera symbolism" of Hitchocck's Rear Window taken to a perverse extreme.

In the end of course, Peeping Tom and Frenzy are linked because both are British, both are in color, both feature Anna Massey, both even have a "Scotland Yard inspector and sergeant" team, and both are far more sexualized than Psycho, which was more of a haunted house "boo!" movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I was wondering whether Alfred Hitchcock cast Anna Massey in 'Frenzy' because he had seen her in 'Peeping Tom'.

---

Though I expect Hitchcock relished the connection when Massey came in for an interview...he first offered Babs to the better known Lynn Redgrave (and there was an attempt made to cast Lynn's sister Vanessa Redgrave as Brenda Blaney -- a gimmick not only in two sisters getting killed, but in the fact that their father, Michael Redgrave, had starred for Hitchcock in The Lady Vanishes.)

But the Redgraves said no. Anna Massey came in to interview to play Brenda's secretary, a small part. Hitchcock gave Anna the key role of Babs.