MovieChat Forums > Frenzy (1972) Discussion > Spoiler - Blainey's end position

Spoiler - Blainey's end position


Chief Oxford wasn't kidding when he said there's no way to compensate in cases of this nature.The truth of the matter is that even though the real killer is found out in the end; Blaney's life is still in the dumps. The only two women who seemed to care about him were dead; and the only two men friends he had; Johnny Porter abandoned him to take a job across the border without giving him his needed alibi first, and Robert Rusk turned out to be the actual murderer and framed/betrayed him. He didn't have anyone left to care about him, made me really feel for him.

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One of the reasons that I think Hitchcock (after about four years) next made the rather happy(for Hitchcock) "Family Plot," is that he'd really piled on the misery with "Frenzy."

Yes, the villain is caught and Blaney is exonerated. But you're exactly right --- two women he loved are brutally dead and ravaged(and you can figure that Rusk chose them BECAUSE they'd been Blaney's women) and he hasn't a friend in the world. And he's broke.

Still, "life goes on," and we can expect that Blaney will be given a fair amount of money(Inspector Oxford says it will be "a little money" but Blaney might well sue for a lot more) and probably a lot of public support to start a career. Why, even black-hearted Felix Forsythe might take him back at the pub.

Brenda Blaney had already rejected Richard, so though he would be hurt that she died that way, she wasn't really part of his future. Babs,however, was, and even the tempermental Blaney probably misses HER.

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I see the outcome of "Frenzy" to rather match the outcome of "Psycho" 12 years earlier. In both films, the psycho killer is captured and the crimes are solved, so there is SOME relief. But the surviving characters will always miss the murder victims, and will likely feel a certain guilt for "causing them to get killed." (Marion stole money because Sam wouldn't marry her, and then drove to meet him, thus coming to the Bates Motel; Rusk likely targeted Brenda and Babs to both incriminate Blaney and to torment him.)

We can figure on a life of psychic pain for Sam Loomis and Lila Crane(in "Psycho") and for Richard Blaney (in "Frenzy.")

But sometimes, said Alfred Hitchcock in his films...that's life.

P.S. The "Frenzy" DVD has a still from a scene filmed but not included in the movie: Richard Blaney having dinner at the Oxford home. But you have to ask: was that a kindness...or more torment?

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