I wouldn't mind if they remade this movie. I think they should remake it with Russell Crowe as Mr. Blaney and Christian Bale as Rusk. I think it is possible to remake it into a pretty good movie. They should get better looking actresses too.
shareEmily Mortimer and Fenella Woolgar? Or Gina McKee? Or ...
shareBy all means make a new movie about a serial rapist/murderer, but why remake this? What would be the point? It's bad movies that should be remade, not good ones.
share"Frenzy" is a good movie, and a very stylish one. But it doesn't seem to lend itself to a remake(even though quite a few Hitchcock movies have been remade.)
The violence in the movie(confined pretty much to one scene) has none of the "fun" of the shock murders in "Psycho" or even the elaborate gore/torture murders young folks like today(n movies like "Saw" and "Final Destination"). The rape-killing is sad, realistic,lingering. But no fun at all.
The rest of the film seems so "personal" to Alfred Hitchcock(the Covent Garden marketplace where Hitchcock's own father plied his trade, the elaborate "potato truck scene"; the "Hitch returns to London" take on the whole piece) that I cannot see a modern-day filmmaker connecting to the material at all.
"Frenzy" was a film that was, in all ways (and probably moreso than the "fun" "Psycho") a film personal to Alfred Hitchcock himself, not only in its London settings, but in its view of the world as a bleak place, with sexual psychopathy a kind of animalistic "rage against the system" lurking among our "normal" lives. Hitchcock was indicting all filmmakers(including HIMSELF) who had made movie fun of people getting violently killed. Here, he seemed to say, take a look at this rape-murder. Rub your nose in it. Realize how ugly real death can be.
Can't see a worthy remake of such a profound yet creepy film being made. Only Hitchcock himself could really get away with it.
Hi Ecarle,
Re: ""Frenzy" is a good movie, and a very stylish one. But it doesn't seem to lend itself to a remake(even though quite a few Hitchcock movies have been remade.)"
Can you tell me which of Hitchock's movies were remade? The ones I know of are Van Sant's shot for shot remake of Psycho, the early eighties version of The Lady Vanishes (with Angela Lansbury in the title role), A Perfect Murder (which is only partly based on Dial "M" for Murder) and The Birds. Which other ones come to mind?
Many thanks.
The 39 Steps was remade a couple of times, in 1960 with Kenneth More(a bit of a British hit, that one) and then again with Robert Powell.
A number of the remakes are for television:
Christopher Reeve in "Rear Window"(1998, around the time that Van Sant's Psycho came out, so a commercial for the Van Sant was shown and the announcer said "Tonight's Presentation of Rear Window is brought to you by Psycho"
Notorious got a TV remake with John Shea for Grant and...Natasha Richardson as Bergman?
Lifeboat was redone in outer space as "Lifepod."
Rebecca has been done on TV a few times. But perhaps that is considered more a remake of Du Maurier's book than of Hitchcock's movie.
You mention the "Birds" remake that has not been made(Naomi Watts and George Clooney were mentioned for the Tippi and Rod roles) so I might as well add that remakes to "Strangers on a Train" and "To Catch A Thief" have been scripted at Warners and Paramount, respectively. No movies made yet, though.
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Of course Hitchcock himself remade his own "The Man Who Knew Too Much." But with new locales(prior to London) characters(the kidnapped girl becomes a kidnapped boy), Technicolor and VistaVision.
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The one Hitchcock movie that I think could use a remake is his last one, Family Plot."
The criss-crossing plot of "Family Plot" could have and should have made for one of the best of Hitchcock classics. But he was very old and very sick when he made it; it is too slack and, thanks to Universal's penny-pinching budget for HItchocck, too cheap. A bigger-budget remake with a tighter script(and perhaps, bigger stars -- much as I love Harris and Devane in the picture) could be quite a movie. With CGI inserted into the still-great "runaway car scene" behind the driver's head.