I just viewed this film and I must say, I never would have expected myself to laugh at the concept of a man beating an already strangled woman in the face with a tire iron, but somehow hitchcock pulled it off!
I must ask if anyone thought this scene was as hillarious as I found it to be. Or am I just sick and twisted? Heh. Seriously though, I was laughing for up until after the end credits.
-evan
Er, you're sick and twisted?
Well, I suspect Hitchcock wanted the moment to play for dark, ironic humor.
Anecdote:
A sound man was assigned to get the right sound of the tire iron cracking the victim's skull. He tried various melons, but the sound effect of tire iron hitting melon was too "bloodthirsty." Finally, he got the right sound effect.
The soundman won't tell us how he got that sound, but the soundman played the tape of it for Hitchcock -- while wearing a bandage around his own forehead with fake blood poured on it. Hitchcock said he liked the sound effect, and asked his soundman: "Would you like an aspirin?"
The point of black humor is to laugh at things that would be inappropriate at other times. The conflict of whether to laugh of not is what gives black humor it's bite.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Unexpected = Funny. We picture a sleeping, hairy man and a braceleted woman's arm drops out. The surprise makes us laugh. The actual structure of the scene is that of a classic one-line joke.
shareOne of the disturbing aspects of Frenzy is how so often Hitchcock plays the gruesome for laughs. All through the potato truck scene(with Babs' corpse kicking Rusk in the face and his little penknife blade breaking off in her fingers.) The woman's bracelet hand falling down is a bit of a joke, too, compounded as Oxford comes through the door and then Rusk.
I like other little jokes throughout the movie that aren't quite so macabre. One that pops to mind right now is when Blaney is in the infirmary and his escape begins with the guard falling over unconscious. The crooks in the room send what looks like their most "harmless" comrade out to alert the other cops to the guard's fall. And that "harmless" comrade, in pajamas with a pear-shaped body and the quizzical face of a child, somewhat hides in the corner as the cops come in on his knock. I just KNOW Hitchcock cast that funny little man, put him in pajamas and directed him to hide himself in the corner like that and put a goofy little smile on as he watches the cops. The whole CONCEPT is funny.
I found a lot of scenes funny, something I missed completely first time I saw it!
Incidentally, I think the iron was a starting handle, not a tyre lever. we still had them on some cars in the 70's!
Such a small love. Such a little tear.