Title: Frenzy

Year: 1972
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: Anthony Shaffer, based on a novel by Arthur La Bern
Stars: Jon Finch, Alec McCowen, Barry Foster, Billie Whitelaw, Barbara Leigh-Hunt

The Story: An antisocial bartender finds that a series of coincidences have conspired to make it look like he’s the “necktie strangler” stalking London. Soon the real killer, a friendly greengrocer, realizes that our hero is the perfect patsy and starts making his life even more hellish.

Why It’s Great: This is the sort of valedictory summation of themes that you always hope every director will pull out at the end of his career, but few do. From the ’30s through the ’50s, Hitchcock excelled at pushing the boundaries of public morals without going over, culminating with Psycho in 1960, where he finally pushed them over the edge. As the ’60s progressed, however, the public’s boundaries disappeared entirely, and he was cut adrift. With this film, he finally abandoned tastefulness and accepted the new license he’d been granted, giving his most lurid and horrifying nightmares free reign onscreen for the first and only time. Hitchcock had made many films in which a “wrong man” had been fingered for a crime and forced to clear his name. He usually made it look like a surprising amount of fun. With this movie, he shows a far more realistic version of the same story. Anyone who studies the stories of the exonerated discovers an unfortunate fact: the sort of people who get falsely convicted tend to be those who do themselves no favors. But Finch’s powerful performance makes this unpleasant character heartbreaking. He has more in common with Job than the ennobled heroes of movies like Saboteur.

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan…