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Bob Rusk Meets "The Bob Rusk Who Was Not" (Barry Foster Meets Michael Caine) In a Movie

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Hitchcock scholars of a certain stripe know that Alfred Hitchcock's first choice to play British sex killer Bob Rusk in Frenzy was ...Michael Caine, who , in 1971 was riding rather high as a young star and whom Hitchcock thus sought for his 1972 release.

In one of his autobios, Caine said that he turned Hitchcock down because "I didn't want to be associated with the part." Caine singled out that Rusk was written was a "particularly sadistic killer of young women."

With Caine out, and after a long interviewing process with generally little-known British actors, Hitchcock settled on Barry Foster to play Rusk. It was easy to see why: as some critics NOT in the know said at the time, "Barry Foster is rather like Michael Caine" -- the Cockney voice, the blondish curly hair, even the ruddy face.

In an interview, Caine mentioned that Barry Foster "played my brother once , on a TV drama.

I could find no evidence of that TV drama, but I DID stumble -- accidentally -- onto an entire MOVIE in which Michael Caine has the lead, Barry Foster has a key supporting role -- and the two actors share three scenes. For a "Frenzy" buff, it was rather fascinating.

The film is called "The Whistle Blower.(Not to be confused with the later "The Whistleblower." Ha.) " It is from 1986 (though some listings have it as 1987.)

It was British -- I don't know if it played theaters for long, or went straight to BBC.

SPOILERS for The Whistle Blower:

The plot is fairly simple. Michael Caine plays a spy of some sort, whose grown son is a linguist and sort of a spy himself. The son dies and the cause of death(via carbon monoxide in a car) is deemed "an accident or suicide.") To clear his son's name, Caine investigates. And finds murder, of course. And various culprits in the government, of course.

The plot is a bit like a more quiet "Get Carter," as Caine single-mindedly seeks to avenge the death of a loved one in an "accident." And though 15 years older than he was in " Get Carter," Caine DOES get to grit his teeth and threaten a few people along the way.

The film has James Fox as a co-star(his brother Edward Fox took ANOTHER role that Caine turned down -- the killer in Day of the Jackel.) And John Gielgud -- just a few years after his Oscar win for "Arthur" is a significant guest star, too.

Barry Foster gets "and Barry Foster" billing. Perhaps honoring his "Frenzy" role and the connection to Caine. Perhaps honoring his "Van Der Vleck" TV detective show of the time.

Michael Caine and Barry Foster get three scenes together in the film, all significant. But before taking in the scenes, one takes in the two actors, facing each other:

Caine turns out to be a lot taller than Foster, and more strapping. Barry Foster comes off as thin, spindly and shorter than Caine, which tells us something about their stardom difference. And 14 years after Frenzy, Foster's blond hair had turned near white -- giving him a somewhat elderly appearance versus Caine, whose blond hair is duller in 1986, but still youthful enough.

The two men project middle age -- Foster a bit older -- and one realizes that Caine's matinee idol period was rather brief -- though he WAS young and virile in Get Carter and Sleuth, his Frenzy era movies.

What comes through as Michael Caine faces off with Barry Foster in The Whistle Blower is that there was only top stardom available for one of them -- they were too similar -- and Caine got it and by 1986, Foster never would.

Still, they are good together. Their three scenes boil down to:

SCENE ONE: Foster and Caine are old friends. Foster used to be a spy "but you can't really get out." Foster cares about Caine's feelings over the loss of his son, and will do everything he can to get to the bottom of it.

SCENE TWO: (Later). As in all good thrillers, "good friend" Barry Foster is now exasperated by Caine's unwillingness to accept the son's death as a an accident or suicide. Now, Foster will NOT help Caine anymore and starts to set up road blocks for Caine to investigate any further. Caine figures it out: uh oh, Foster not only isn't a friend -- he's part of the solution.

SCENE THREE: A long, important, climactic scene in which Caine and Foster meet in the latter's apartment over drinks -- a LOT of drinks. Two drunk men --Caine not really -- confront each other. Foster admits that he set the son up, but never dreamed he would get killed. Caine manages to kill Foster with the alcohol, somehow. Poison.

What's interesting about "The Whistle Blower" given our knowledge of the Frenzy casting is to see that Caine and Foster EVENTUALLY shared some pretty intense and important movie scenes together. One wonders what the two actors talked about. Did Foster THANK Caine for turning down Bob Rusk?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Also: there are echoes of Foster's Bob Rusk character(without the sex killer part) in his Whistle Blower part. In SCENE ONE, he's Caine's best friend and on the side of good -- just like Bob Rusk seems to be to Richard Blaney early in Frenzy. Whereas Hitchcock lets us know that Rusk is the killer(and a villain) early on in Frenzy, The Whistle Blower takes its time to get to that revelation. Though those of us in the know never trust Barry Foster.

Foster gets a couple of the same lines (or almost) as in Frenzy:

Frenzy:

Rusk to Blaney: "Are you OK?"

Whistle Blower:

Foster to Caine: "Are you alright?"

Frenzy:

Rusk to Blaney (at Rusk's flat): "Come in, come in!"

Whistle Blower

Foster to Caine (at Foster's flat): "Come in, come in!"

These are little echoes, but there nonetheless. One realizes that there are only so many ways to write lines.

Weirdest of all: in their final moments together, Caine and Foster are positioned face to face in an intense close-up together that weirdly mimics how close Foster's face was to his rape-murder victim Brenda Blaney in Frenzy. There will be no rape here(there will be a murder) but Foster is positioned so closely to how he was shot in that Frenzy scene that one wonders: an homage?

That's about it, but I will note that I had no idea that Barry Foster and Michael Caine acted in a movie together until TWENTY FIVE YEARS after they made the movie.

These are the "little gifts" that film buff gets just by surfing the streaming channels and landing on a movie one never saw.

Bob Rusk...meet Bob Rusk

[–] EdwardHaskell (122) a year ago

Caine singled out that Rusk was written was a "particularly sadistic killer of young women."

I guess he figured there was nothing sadistic about slashing Angie Dickinson with a straight razor in the vastly inferior Dressed to Kill several years later.

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Caine singled out that Rusk was written was a "particularly sadistic killer of young women."

I guess he figured there was nothing sadistic about slashing Angie Dickinson with a straight razor in the vastly inferior Dressed to Kill several years later.

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Yes, there were ironies all over the place with that outcome.

In this autobiography where he wrote that about Frenzy(his first of two autobios), Caine also wrote about how playing the Norman Bates-like killer in Dressed to Kill saved his career. He'd had four flops in a row -- five and you are out. Dressed to Kill was not a flop.

But that's the thing: when Caine rejected Frenzy in 1971, he was "riding high" as a major young star -- he did "Sleuth" instead(though maybe he could have done Frenzy AND Sleuth), opposite Laurence Oliver he didn't NEED Frenzy. (More irony, both Sleuth as a stage play first and Frenzy as an adapted novel were scripted by the same man, Anthony Shaffer, who spent 1972 basking as "the writer of Sleuth and Frenzy" -- a double calling card.

And here is another thing:

When Hitchcock offered Anthony Perkins the dangerous, possibly career-ending role as a psycho killer in Psycho(1960), Perkins accepted among other reasons because HITCHCOCK was riding high -- the big hit North by Northwest just before, major hits and classics (Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo) all through the fifties AND a big hit TV show. Perkins decided to take the risk with Hitch.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

When Hitchcock offered Michael Caine the dangerous, possibly career-ending role as a psycho RAPIST killer in Frenzy(1972) Caine didn't accept among other reasons because Hitchcock was considered...declining, no good anymore for a hit or a classic, old, senile. After Psycho -- The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz -- were considered films of decline. Caine probably saw no reason to risk his career on Hitchcock at this point. (That Frenzy WAS a good movie, and a Ten-Best Critics favorite, and somewhat of a hit -- oops, Michael!)

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"in the vastly inferior Dressed to Kill"

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I have to agree on that. Frenzy was marked by Hitchcock's directorial style and strong sense of motifs (neckties, potatoes, Covent Garden worker bees) and themes(aided by Anthony Shaffer); Dressed to Kill was a rather poorly written Psycho knockoff(moved to the big city of NYC.)

Still, I'm rather OK that Michael Caine turned down Frenzy. Barry Foster as Rusk was willing to enact some pretty horrible, cowardly, cruel behavior -- it rather FIT not to have a familiar star playing the role(Foster seemed to have been cast straight from the asylum!) And Caine said that none other than John Wayne had advised him "never play a rapist."