Behind-the-scenes footage of Hitchcock directing Frenzy

Fascinating in a number of ways, and disturbing in some, too.

Let us count the ways:

Hitchcock stopped making films long before "Making of" documentaries were routinely made for VHS/DVDs. Occasionally "Making of" films were produced ("Bullitt" comes to mind) and shown(in the US) as end of movie filler on "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies" and the like, but those films were dull as dirt, making the most exciting movie(like "Bullitt") look like nothing.

"Luckily," then, we have no such footage of Hitchcock directing any of his later big ones like Vertigo, NBNW, Psycho, The Birds, etc. But luckily, came 1971 and Hitchcock's grand return to London (for 1972's Frenzy), some Brits got together and filmed the great man at great length.

Evidently "Frenzy" merited a LOT of documentary footage. What you have linked to has some of the most macabre material(the first murder, a corpse), but I have seen other segments of this footage elsehwere including:

The filming of Monica Barling coming down the alley and entering Brenda's office and the scream later(a honking horn for filming purposes with the female extras who stop and keep walking.)

The filming of the first scene where Babs and Blaney meet the Porters in their Hilton Hotel Room.

The speech by the River Thames with a helicopter hovering(the Assistant Director tells the crowd, "don't look at the helicopter, imagine it isn't there, watch the speech.")

The potato truck sequence...complete with a pretty girl wearing a potato sack like a dress, with a hole cut for her head(never seen in the shots of the body).

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Evidently there could be a full 30 minutes or so of Hitchcock directing Frenzy. It would be great if it could ALL be put in one place.

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The footage here:

When Hitchcock is first shown in the "countryside," I thought: this scene must have been cut from the picture. But then we see Blaney and Babs having the talk they have in the park near the London Hilton. Hitchcock just inserted the Hilton shots..seems to have filmed this in the woods near Pinewood Studios.

Rusk strangles Brenda. Francis Coppola said that film crews gather round anytime a murder scene is filmed, they want to see death enacted. How disturbing to watch Rusk strangle Brenda in a single take with Hitchcock giving some guidance. Very disturbing. "Fake," but obviously of distress to actress Barbara Leigh-Hunt having to enact this lingering death.

Note: somebody(not Hitch), yells sharply at Foster during the strangling "Move your right hand!" and then tries to move Foster physically DURING the stranglng. Its a bit rough treatment...and suggests(as rumored) that Hitchcock didn't direct "Frenzy" as much as his DP(Gil Taylor of A Hard Day's Night and Star Wars) did.

In another interview, Barry Foster said that the tie used to kill Brenda had a special knot so she couldn't really be strangled. In this "action" take, however, it looks like Foster enwraps a REAL tie round Leigh-Hunt's neck. Looks a little dangerous. Maybe the knot "caught" the tie after it was tied.

The dead naked girl in Rusk's bed at the end. Funny to see her alive and joking and topless right before she is instructed by Hitch to enact a corpse with tongue sticking out. The actress looks nothing like her "corpse," I didn't recognize her until she assumed the corpse look. And this is a little disturbing, too.

We have no footage of Hitchcock directing Janet Leigh and Martin Balsam as the murder victims in "Psycho" as they are killed. Looking at this "Frenzy" footage, I'm glad we don't. No need to see "action!" before Leigh-Hunt(how close to Janet LEIGH) is strangled; no need to see that topless corpse alive and kicking.

And yet, somehow, still disturbing.

The work of thriller making is its own weird practice.

Note: "Family Plot" got a LITTLE footage shot of its making. A local Los Angeles film crew in1 975 shot Hitchcock filming the moment in the Angeles National Forest when Joe Maloney's car tries to hit Blanche and Lumley and goes over the cliff instead.

Finally: interesting to see Hitchcock, at age 71 I believe and beset by illnesses, damn alert and concise and amusing in his lengthy discussion of his movies in general and "Frenzy" in particular.

Thanks again.