Favorite Shot: Rusk with the Wheelbarrow

The disposal of bodies is, I think, not something that is often covered in murder/thriller movies. But what a problem it must create for the killer.

---

Indeed. Hitchcock dealt with body disposal a few times. He made one entire movie on the subject: "The Trouble With Harry."

Prior to that, "Rope" opened with a murder and the victim being placed in a cedar chest -- upon which food is soon served for a small dinner party and we spend the whole movie knowning the body is there.

"Rear Window" had a killer solving his body disposal problems by cutting the body up -- pieces in the East River, the head in a flower garden and then a hatbox. All described, none shown. 1954.

And then "Psycho" had Hitchcock devoting an inordinate amount of screen time to the disposal of the body of shower victim Marion Crane...all the better to mourn her death and meet Norman Bates. (Hitch spends all of five seconds on the disposal of the body of detective Arbogast...a shot of Norman at the convenient swamp near the Bates Motel tells all.)

---

Hitchcock does try to deal with this issue in Frenzy – one woman is disposed of in the river, Babs in a load of potatoes being taken back to the country to be ploughed under, no need to get rid of Brenda Blaney, and the last victim is to be put in a large trunk…And then what? Stored in left-luggage at a railway station? How very 1920s!

---

Like some real-life serial killers, I see Bob Rusk as a bit of a showboater. His necktie motif is part of it, but he seems to want to be creative in never disposing of a body the same way twice -- this also helps avoid detection, I suppose, otherwise every potato truck in town would be staked out.

Brenda Blaney he just leaves in her office, but I expect she was a "special" victim..not the sort of woman Rusk could lure to his flat, and he wanted to kill HER to hurt(or frame) Richard Blaney.

---

I think about Frenzy a lot, as clearly do you.

---

Afraid so. In my case, very very carefully. My attraction to it stems from the fond fan memories of Alfred Hitchcock "returning to relevance" with a bunch of rave reviews in 1972, and my attendant excitement at his comeback. But over the years, I've actually paid attention to the movie and...the rave reviews were right, but it is a dark, sick film.

And its darkness and sickness are part of its greatness. Hitchocck relates these issues with great taste, some humor, and no lack of tragic sadness.

That said, my forays to the "Frenzy" board are intermittant. The movie attracts the wrong kind of people, sometimes.

Odd, though: Once upon a time, it was Psycho that was "the sickest Hitchcock film ever made." Today, THAT Hitchcock film is treated like a quaint PG period piece. I expect the sexual component of Frenzy has made it the sickest Hitchcock film ever made, and the close-up look at Bob Rusk during the main murder and when disposing of bodies.

---

--

To quote the title of Charlotte Chandler’s biography, “It’s only a movie” but I would dearly love to know who Hitchcock imagined (if he ever did) who the other victims were, what they did, how did they attract Rusk’s attention.

The girl in the river; who was she? In Foery’s book it is stated that the initial treatment was to have her floating up wearing one red fishnet stocking with the other used to strangle her still around her neck. Red fishnets in 1972 - does this suggest a prostitute?

I have always thought that the girl in bed was a prostitute because of the garish bangles she is wearing. That, and the (admittedly throwaway) line early in the film that American tourists expect London to be fog-shrouded and “littered with ripped whores.”

---

I would tend to agree that hookers were the targets. Again, in real life, hookers are the easiest, least missed, and most vulnerable targets for serial killers...especially killers who hate women and their very sexuality. And this goes way back: Jack the Ripper killed hookers(hence the line in the movie.)

"Frenzy" never gets into the issue, but I expect that Rusk decided one day to torment his "friend" Dick Blaney by killing women close TO Blaney. At a minimum, Blaney would be fingered for the killings...but these were "Blaney's women." Rusk got to share them sexually WITH Blaney, even if one was an "ex".

By the time we get to the dead woman in Rusk's bed, Brenda and Babs are dead, he's done framing Blaney, and probably indeed back to killing hookers.

---

Frenzy is fiction of course and nobody’s imaginative property, so the victims can be whatever I want them to be!

---

I suppose so. Recall that in "Psycho," the shrink reveals that Norman Bates(as Mother) killed two women before shower victim Marion Crane. In the shower as well? Were they guests? Psycho IV: The Beginning said "No" -- the first was a teenage slut who tired to seduce Young Norman in Mother's bedroom; the second an older floozie whom Norman tried to seduce in a car near the motel, with Mother overriding his lust.

But that was just one writer's idea(Joseph Stefano's! He wrote the screenplay for "Psycho" too!)

Me, I think the earlier two women WERE guests at the motel, and that in ten years, only three times did women alone STAY at the Bates Motel.

---

Finally, I tried to establish for years who the actresses playing the first seen and last victims were; thanks to the Net I now know they are stunt-girl Roberta Gibbs in the river and Susan Travers in bed.

---

Ah! Now we know. There is footage on YouTube of Hitchcock directing Susan Travers in the bed...she's alive and well(and topless) and Hitchcock asks how her mother is and then suddenly...he yells action, and she's "dead."

There is also footage on the "Frenzy" DVD documentary of ANOTHER woman who played "Babs in the potato sack" for the scenes of Rusk manhandling the body from the breasts down. A very pretty brunette, wearing the sack like a dress, with a hole cut out on top for her head to poke out. Her head is never shown in the potato truck sequence...just Anna Massey's on the highway at the end.

---

I have taken the liberty of "bumping" my old post "The Necktie Killer: How Many Victims" to show how the script lays out exactly how many women Rusk kills, if not exactly who all of them are.

Seven. All women. One more than the six victims(four women, two men) killed by Norman Bates.