Its a hard call.
Hitchcock certainly made "Frenzy" to keep up with the times -- the "R" and "X"'(now NC-17) ratings gave everybody freedom to include nudity, cussing, simulated sex and ultra-violence -- and Hitchocck made Frenzy accordingly.
But Hitchcock bowed to something else "in the air" -- a rejection by Hollywood of the kind of "fantastical fakery" that he lived for: matte paintings, process work, soundstage sets.
Movies in the 70's were gritty and real --and Frenzy , by Hitchcock standards, was pretty gritty and real, with a lot of outdoor location work in Covent Garden and other parts of London. (Though Hitch snuck in a great matte painting of the London skylaine at night as the psycho killer pushed a wheelbarrow with a victim in a sack on it.)
But there are clues that Hitchcock might NOT have gone "all in" on gore and sex and nudity had he kept living and working in the "R rated age."
One: His final movie, Family Plot, backed off from the R rating of Frenzy to a PG. There was some cussing, but no nudity, no sex(other than being talked about) and no ultra-violence(only one death in the movie -- accidental.) Family Plot had a score by John Williams and sounded a bit like a Spielberg movie...hardly R-rated stuff.
Two: Hitchcock died in 1980 but he lived to see the movies BACK AWAY from the hard R stuff of the 70's(Straw Dogs, Deliverance, A Clockwork Orange) and head into the more "kid friendly" work of Spielberg and Lucas. Special effects came back BIG. Matte paintings came back BIG. Process fakery came back BIG. Had Hitchcock lived and miracularouly had his old energy back in the 80s', I daresay he would have thrown out Frenzy/Brian DePalma style gore in favor of North by Northwest/Rear Window "fun."
We will never know. But what was for sure is that Frenzy would not have been at home in the era of Star Wars, Indy Jones, Harry Potter, and Marvel.
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liscarkat (19385)
3 months ago
In the 1930s through 1960s, he rarely, if ever even pushed the limits of what gore, violence, and sex were permitted then. He might have got a bit more spicy in the 1980s, but probably would have stayed restrained and classy.
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roger1 (4026)
3 months ago
In the 1930s through 1960s, he rarely, if ever even pushed the limits of what gore, violence, and sex were permitted then. He might have got a bit more spicy in the 1980s, but probably would have stayed restrained and classy.
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I agree with that on principle. In many ways,the 70's had so MANY hard-R movies (often with things like rape and gory murders, often of women) that we simply are never going back to movies of THAT ilk, EXCEPT in the torture porn and slasher market of today. "Mainstream movies" are much less gory and definitely rape free.
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roger1 (4026)
3 months ago
In a biography of Sam Peckinpah called "If They Move, Kill 'Em," there is an extensive interview with British actress Susan George about the brtual, lingering rape scene she went through in Peckinpah's Straw Dogs.
George said that she said "yes" to the scene to get the part, but once she had the part, she balked at the scene -- and Peckinpah and his producers pretty much FORCED (threatened with work loss, lawsuits, blacklisting) her to go through with it. The filming took several days and was grueling. The results were pretty hard-R indeed(as a matter of storyline, she is FIRST raped by an old boyfriend and -- "she kind of likes it" (uh oh) and THEN, the old boyfriend holds her down so HIS male friend can sodomize her. Yep -- i spelled it out. Here comes the administrator.)
Thinking back on this interview with George, one realizes that to get those "sexy" scenes in the rough 70's, many an actress was likely coerced into it by the men making the movie. And the scenes were awful and brutalizing to enact for those actresses. Those days are over.
So the 80's DID get "nicer" and I expect Hitchcock would have gotten "Frenzy" type material out of his system. If -- again -- he magically didn't die, got young and healthy, and kept making movies. None of which was possible.
PS. It was a less graphic rape scene -- though the character was then brutally strangled with a necktie -- but Barbara Leigh-Hunt , who filmed the rape muder scene in Frenzy -- said she didn't mind doing it at all (three days worth of filming) and it proved how bad the psycho killer was. So SOME actresses were OK filming these scenes
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roger1 (4026)
3 months ago
In the 1930s through 1960s, he rarely, if ever even pushed the limits of what gore, violence, and sex were permitted then.
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Returing to respond to that comment.
I'm not sure how gory, violent and sexual particular other OTHER films may have been disturbed by these Hitchcock scenes:
Sabotage(1936) Young boy killed by bomb he is carrying; saboteur stabbed in stomach to death.
Foreign Correspondent(1940) Diplomat shot point blank in the face -- brief shot of bloodied face.
Lifeboat(1944) Young mother of dead baby commits suicide. Nazi drowns man after the latter's amputation. Nati is beaten to death, bloody face, drowned.
Spellbound: (1945) In flashback, young boy slides down roof , falls off, and is impaled to death on an iron spiked post.
Rope (1948) Opens with the final moments, in close up, of a young man being strangled two-on-one by two other young men, one of whom talks about the pleasure of the victim going limp(a homosexual erotic connotation for 1948; the movie was banned in certain cities and military bases.)
Strangers on a Train(1951.) The hero's estranged wife is quite the slut: She goes on a trip to the fairgrounds with another man's baby in her belly and TWO young men as dates and allows herself to be picked up by ANOTHER man(Robert Walker) who proceeds to strangle her to death in a pretty lingering scene for 1951.
Sex AND violence here.
I Confess(1953): A priest (Monty Clift) had an affair pre-priesthood.
Dial M for Murder(1954): Grace Kelly is chearing on husband Ray Milland(who is cheating on her) with Bob Cummings. Miland's hired assassin tries to strangle Grace Kelly alone in her apartment in a long sequence that(for 1954) looks a lot like rape. Kelly turns the tables by plunging scissors into the killer's back; he falls backwards: close-up on the scissors jamming up into his back and heart to kill him(no blood though.)
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roger1 (4026)
3 months ago
Rear Window(1954) Raymond Burr murders his wife (off-screen, how we don't know), and then proceeds (also off screen) to dismember her body into parts, stuffing the parts into his travelling salesman jewelry suitcase and dumping the parts in the Hudson River. He buries her head in a garden, strangles the little dog who tried to dig it up , and moves the head to a hatbox in his closet. None of this is SHOWN, but audiences sure could IMAGINE some gruesome goings on. And they have to look at the body of the innocent strangled little dog(almost a more objectionable murder than that of the nagging wife.)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) In Morocco, an assassin chases down a heroic spy and stabs him once in a lingering manner, in the back. Quite a brutal moment AND we then watch the victim stagger into James Stewart's arms for a particularly intimate close-up of his mouth against Jimmy's ear.
And came the 60s: the bloody murders and stuffed body in Psycho; the farmer with the pecked out eyes in The Birds; the bloody bludgeoning of the sailor(by a little blonde girl) in Marnie; the long and iingering murder of Gromek the Commie spy in Torn Curtain, and the torture of a captured Cuban resistance couple in Topaz.
I'd say Hitchcock -- especially in the censored40s and 50s -- pulled off some scenes that probably disturbed audiences FOR THEIR TIME. And in the 60s as censorship fell away(gone by 1968) Hitchocck really went to town. Psycho and The Birds were considered shockers, and Torn Curtain and Topaz were violent, especially Torn Curtain.
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