MovieChat Forums > Frenzy (1972) Discussion > Other film influences on this?

Other film influences on this?

posted 12 years ago by boogles
2 replies | jump to latest

When I first watched this(about 4 years ago on Film 4 in the UK), I noticed some similarities to two other films I had seen. The first was '10 Rillington Place'(released a year before Frenzy and featuring a serial killer and the same grim London - it even gets mentioned in Frenzy). The second was 'Peeping Tom', not just because it features Anna Massey, but also because the lead actor (Karlheinz Böhm)in that looked similar to Barry Foster in Frenzy. It was that whole blonde blue eyed thing going on. Plus, Peeping Tom was about a serial killer as well. The colour scheme seems to be the same in both Frenzy and Peeping Tom.

I think that Hitchcock and Michael Powell(the director of Peeping Tom) were friends. I think Hitchcock even suggested Kim Hunter for Powell's 'A Matter of Life and Death'. I know that he thought that Powell was badly treated by the critics over Peeping Tom as well.

[–] sanjay_kn 11 years ago

the movies could be similar in story but the treatment of the subject by hitchock is something else. It is some film noir and a masterpiece. The scenes, the shock, the camera work( and the way london is captured) are just un-rivaled by anyone!

[–] ecarle 11 years ago

Hitchcock and his screenwriter Anthony Shaffer actually WATCHED "10 Rillington Place" before making "Frenzy" to prepare "their version of the story."

"Rillington" was the relatively "true" (and hence more dull) "Frenzy" story of John Christie, a blobby, non-descript sex killer who murdered a man's wife and saw the man hanged for the crime.

I've seen "Rillington" and it raises an issue Frenzy does not: when Blaney says Rusk is the killer, why isn't Rusk brought into the trial of Blaney? Well, in "Rillington Place' the "Rusk" character(Richard Attenborough as Christie) IS brouught into the trial, questioned by the defense lawyer as the possible killer, but dismissed and ignored.

Of course, "Frenzy" brings in killer Neville Heath as well as Christie(HItchocck had Barry Foster curl his hair like Heath) and is a far, far, far more stylized and atmospheric film than "Rillington" with all the requisite Hitchcock set-pieces and humor.

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I expect Peeping Tom was a clear influence on Frenzy...the casting of Anna Massey above all, but also the sexual sadism of the killer...but again, Hitchcock knew from "box office boom" and made a movie that was more of a MOVIE than Peeping Tom...and made 12 crucial years later, when critics wouldn't be outraged so much.