Hi,
I'm trying to figure out which actress plays the lady that didn't want Richard staying at their house because she thought he was guilty(she lived with a man that always called him dicko). I saw the movie only once and I'm never good at remembering names, so if anyone can help I would really appreciate it. It's been driving me absolutely nuts trying to figure out which actress she is.
Thanks.
That was Billie Whitelaw (most recently seen in "Hot Fuzz") playing Hetty Porter. Clive Swift -- easily recognized as the poor, henpecked Richard on "Keeping Up Appearances" -- played her husband, Johnny.
shareI would add that Billie Whitelaw was the one player in "Frenzy" whom Hitchcock envisioned in the part from the start...and managed to get a "yes" from in playing it. Some other folks turned him down on other parts.
Whitelaw was in lots of movies, still working today indeed (great!).
In 1976, she was the evil nursemaid protecting the devil child Damien in "The Omen."
In 1976, she was the evil nursemaid protecting the devil child Damien in "The Omen."
Woah, that was Mrs. Baylock from "The Omen"? Can't believe those evil eyes slipped past me!
shareThanks for all the help. I really wasn't sure if that was her. I Googled her name, but the pictures didn't look close enough for me to be sure it was her. Anyway, I was really taken back by her beauty in the movie so I was curious to know who she was. Once again, I really appreciate the help.
shareYou're welcome.
Whitelaw was very good. a "cold beauty" who dominates her rather goofy-looking husband (note: ALL the women in "Frenzy" are dominating their men in some way; the battle-axe/milquetoast couple at Brenda Blaney's agency; Mrs. Oxford/Inspector Oxford; successful Brenda/failed Richard, etc. "Rusk strikes back.")
In the book the Porter couple stayed loyal friends to Richard Blaney to the end, testifying on his behalf at his murder trial, to no avail. Hitchcock turned them into fair-weather friends (if somewhat understandably so; Blaney's a jerk.)
note: ALL the women in "Frenzy" are dominating their men in some way;
"Frenzy" is a tricky and, I would offer,exceedingly adult film...but in the right way.
I want to make sure that I don't come off as ADVOCATING for Rusk killing the women. But the film was made in 1972, when feminism was really taking off, and here we have a film in which the women are generally "running" the men, and one of the men -- Rusk -- is literally crazy over it.
Hitchcock's true daring was in positing such a tempermental hero (Blaney), such a "charming" villain (Rusk, when he ISN'T raping/killing) and sympathetic heroines whose sympathy doesn't protect them from getting killed. It was a look at "life as it is lived" --these aren't "movie characters."
One more thing: the truly stunning murder in "Frenzy" is of Babs, which Hitchcock holds off on as the SECOND murder (unlike Marion Crane in "Psycho") who goes first. Hitchcock misled us to believe that Brenda would be the film's only female victim (ala Marion or even Miriam in "Strangers on a Train")
...and then killed off the heroine at the end of the SECOND act.
Very complex near-end film from Hitchcock.
P.S. Perhaps some of that complexity should be credited to screenwriter Anthony Shaffer ("Sleuth") and to Arthur Labern,who wrote the novel.
P.P.S. Feminists HATED "Frenzy." Universal offices were picketed by the National Organization of Women (NOW), who threw Barbie dolls with neckties round their necks at the offices, and awarded Hitchcock the "keep them in their place" award. Didn't stop "Frenzy" from being a hit, but possibly stopped "Frenzy" from getting any Oscar noms.
I'm only getting in on "Frenzy" fairly late in the game, but it's interesting to me that you point out that feminists hated this film. The thing that struck me about it was that, given the time in which it was filmed, the women (or, at least, the leads) seemed fairly progressive. Maybe it's because the murderer was targeting women . . . but, then again, that particular type of character would. That, to me, was sadly realistic. It's not something to espouse, of course, and it certainly is ugly, but I also found it highly believable. It was all the more unsettling because Rusk was so believable to me.
shareI am with you in that analysis. I think that the feminists were "off-target." The women are so progressive in the film that Rusk...AND Blaney...come off as "out of step."
The funny one no one notices is Inspector Oxford's wife. Everyone focusses on her funny meals. But she NEVER believes that Blaney is the killer (because a man wouldn't rape his EX-wife of ten years). Her husband does think Blaney's the killer ("There's not even the complication of another suspect"), and screws up, and we get the final priceless exchange:
Inspector Oxford: Well, it looks like we put the wrong man away this time.
Mrs. Oxford: What do you mean, "we"? YOU put him away.
As I've posted elsehwere, a feminist writer railed against "Frenzy" in a June 1972 New York Times article, saying that she wished she could see a movie where a woman overpowered,terrorized, and raped a man.
One month later, in July, she got HALF her wish: "Deliverance," in which a man was overpowered, terrorized, and raped...by a man.
As I've posted elsehwere, a feminist writer railed against "Frenzy" in a June 1972 New York Times article, saying that she wished she could see a movie where a woman overpowered,terrorized, and raped a man.
Nice thoughts.
"Frenzy" gets short-changed as a "late Hitchcock," but I think it reveals, and only after several viewings, a true depth of character.
Film critics of 1972 went on and on about how "funny" the Oxford meals were, and Hitchcock clouded the issue by saying that these scenes allowed him to slip in "exposition about the case."
But truly, if you LISTEN to Mrs. Oxford, it is exactly as you said: she's instinctively RIGHT about Blaney's innocence from the get-go, and her polite but arrogant husband is totally WRONG. At one point, he even condescends to her "investigations cannot be based on women's intuition." And she calls him on it when he proves the idiot at the end. (One reason he IS an idiot: Blaney TELLS Oxford the killer is Rusk, and that is easily proved, Oxford finds out.)
There is equal complexity to Richard Blaney's relationship with his ex-wife Brenda. We learn that he was an RAF squadron leader -- a war hero -- and Brenda married that exciting man. But his fortunes declined as hers rose, and now she is a successful businesswoman and he is virtually homeless. Brenda cares about Richard, but he has lost in life, and she is of a generation of women who "move on" from such men. It rather stings to see their relationship.
That she takes him to her "professional women's club" is perhaps almost a bit of punishment on her part of Richard. And then she gives him money.
We don't know much about Bob Rusk, really, except for one thing: he really hates women. "Women. You're all the same," he spits at Brenda right after trying to rape her (he's impotent) and right before strangling her. "I'll show you." Thus is distilled down to its most primal level impotent male rage against female assertion.
The jury's out on Hitchcock's misogyny or not. I like to point out that a man is killed with just as much lingering detail (in "Torn Curtain") as Brenda is in "Frenzy." Men die gruesome deaths in "Marnie" and "Psycho," too. In his later years, Hitchcock was perhaps more intrigued by the inhumanity of murder in general as by the victimization of women.
Hitchcock needed some press in his old age. The rape-murder in "Frenzy" got it for him. EVERY interview he did on that film centered on that scene ("That's how it would really happen. Ten years ago, I couldn't have shown that, and you wouldn't get to see the killer at his true work").
One thing I do believe Hitchcock wanted to show was: sex murder isn't sexy. Psychopathic killers are depraved and cruel, their victims totally innocent. Hitchcock had listened to tapes of REAL killers' confessions, found them sickening and heartbreaking and wanted to share that depravity with the world. I think he earned the right to make that statement, that one time, with that one movie.
"Frenzy" is one of the near-miss Great Hitchcocks. Some over-expository scenes in the middle slow it down and throw it off course. The rest of it is a stylistic and thematic triumph.
One more thing: Richard Blaney is carefully portrayed, too. Yes, he has a temper, and can be a whiner. But in Jon Finch's carefully wrought performance, we can see the remnants of the RAF war hero, the decent man that Brenda married and that Babs can still love. Blaney may just come out of this horrible experience a better man...but he'll never be a happy one, thanks to Rusk's cruel murders of the women in Blaney's life.
Excellent observations. I also found it ironic that Blaney felt it was him against the world . . . and then he was placed in a situation where that really was true. But perhaps because he had cried "wolf" too many times, no one believed him. (No one, that is, except the inspector's wife.)
Question: You make this comment, and it's one I've read a few times:
"Women. You're all the same," he spits at Brenda right after trying to rape her (he's impotent)
I agree with you...on this most delicate of movie subjects.
Its why quick-comment references to the "rape-murder" in "Frenzy" are correct, though Rusk's inability to perform "all the way" is part of his psychopathy, a reason for his rage, and well, I think we know the rest of how a killer like Rusk DOES find satisfaction. Hitchcock had studied up on this...
The earlier "adult movie" "Anatomy of a Murder" (way back in 1959!) had taken up this very topic in a courtroom testimony context of the topic: "did rape occur?"
Long before "CSI" and other TV shows made this a relatively commonplace topic, it appears that Hitchcock did have a fair bit of insight into this specific form of violence.
I have "Anatomy of a Murder" on tape and haven't watched in quite some time. I'm going to have to look it up again. Thanks!
Yes, Hitchcock had been reading and collecting books on several British psychopaths -- principally a sex maniac named Neville Heath but also one named John Christie for whose crimes an innocent man was hung -- and had been trying to make a movie on them since around 1967, when he had a different project entitled "Frenzy" written and rejected by Universal.
When he got to make the British "Frenzy" in 1972, and cast littlep-known Barry Foster as the killer, he turned much of this material over TO Foster to help the actor prepare his decidedly creepy performance.
But indeed, that was then, and this is now, and CSI and Law and Order: SVU cover such depravity on a weekly basis.
It might be of interest to note that Christie's story was dealt with in the film 10 Rillington Place just one year before Frenzy, with Richard Attenborough as Christie and John Hurt as the man who was wrongly hanged.
shareYes, I have read that, and I have not seen "10 Rillington Place." I want to, and I will. I understand that it is a very straightforward and low-key movie, not in the "Frenzy" thriller tradition.
ecarle
(note: ALL the women in "Frenzy" are dominating their men in some way; the battle-axe/milquetoast couple at Brenda Blaney's agency; Mrs. Oxford/Inspector Oxford; successful Brenda/failed Richard, etc. "Rusk strikes back.")
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
But didn't Rusk have a photo of his mother in the middle of his mantlepiece in his flat?
True, Rusk had a photo of his mother on the mantlepiece. She didn't seem to have a big influence in his life, unless I missed something.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
Well, there was a bit more about her influence, but not that heavily:
Rusk introduced his Mother to Blaney from his window("Puh-leezed to meet ya, I'm sure," says the rather goofy-looking lady.)
And he quotes her to Blaney a couple of times:
"'Beulah, peel me a grape,' that's what me mum always used to say."
""Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in," my mum used to say."
The mother domination isn't as heavy as in "Psycho" -- indeed, I think that these brief references are almost an "in-joke" for "Psycho"-philes, but Mother's photo is indeed the only one on his mantlepiece(no dad, no siblings, no "lady friends"), and she's the only person he quotes.
So Rusk must have had a very, very, very interesting childhood. (The "peel me a grape" line strikes me as a queasy clue.)
Billie Whitelaw, a great character actress.
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