50 Years Since "Exile on Main Street," "Honky Cat" "Take it Easy" -- and "Frenzy"

I saw an article the other day saluting the Rolling Stones album "Exile on Main Street" on its 50th Anniversary. The summer of 1972. Here was a double album "opus" -- kind of a more rock and blues "White Album" that yielded only one major single("Tumbling Dice") but had lots of other good tunes on it as well. ("Rocks Off," "Happy" -- no not that one; "All Down the Line," "Sweet Virginia.")

And it got me remembering. I bought Exile on Main Street in that 1972 summer when it came out and played it all the time. "Tumbling Dice" was on the summer radio, and so was the breakthrough Eagles debut hit "Take it Easy" and Elton John's jaunty "Honky Cat" (from the same album as Rocket Man) making for a decidedly exhilarating pop rock summer.

The "summer movie blockbuster season" had not yet taken hold as a thing. "Jaws" would start it (sort of) in 1975 (but Jaws was about the ONLY big movie in the summer of 1975)..."Star Wars" would further advance the idea of "summer blockbusters" -- but it took to the 80's to get summers FILLED with blockbusters, like in 1984 where we got Ghostbusters AND Indy Jones and the Temple of Doom AND Star Trek III AND Gremlins...

Nope, the summer of 1972 didn't have much in the way of blockbusters. The Godfather was still playing, but it had been an Easter release. Clunky sequels like "Ben"(a cuddly rat movie follow up to Willard) and "Shaft's Big Score" were at the drive-in. Clint Eastwood -- riding high off Dirty Harry as his most recent film -- turned in the rather low budget and lackadaisical Western "Joe Kidd."

But.... Alfred Hitchcock -- after a few years of poorly received(though not bad) movies -- suddenly took over the summer with a gruesome psycho thriller hit called "Frenzy" -- the tale of a rapist-strangler called "The Necktie Killer"(his choice of weapon) stalking modern-day London women...and how the wrong man gets chased for his crimes.

I write this to honor Frenzy on its 50th Anniversary because -- hey, nobody else will.

The thing is, Frenzy was VERY well reviewed by ALMOST all the critics as a major comeback for the 72 year old Hitchcock("Its the work of a young man!" said Hitchcock pal Norman Lloyd). Hitchcock did a lot of interviews in print and a 90-minute Dick Cavett show TV interview in person. And it proved to be an odd mix of the "classic"(Hitchcock's trademark visual style and cinematic prowess came back with a vengeance) and the "disturbingly new" (a central rape-strangling added elements of nudity, sex, and ultra-violence that even Psycho had not tried in 1960.)

Speaking of Psycho, however well Frenzy was reviewed in 1972, it wasn't nearly the blockbuster hit that Psycho was(now THERE was a summer blockbuster before they started), and it hasn't lasted as the major achievement that Psycho was. Or Rear Window. Or (dubiously) Vertigo. Or North by Northwest.

But Frenzy meant something THEN..in 1972, as a Grand Old Man came back and reminded us -- amidst a summer of "nothing" movies -- what a quality film by a quality filmmaker COULD be.

Leaving where I came in, I saw Frenzy two times that summer(once in a theater with my embarrassed father, and once at a drive-in with friends) and as a memory, I cannot really separate Hitchcock and Frenzy FROM the soundtrack of that summer -- Exile on Main Street on my turntable, the Eagles and Elton John on the radio.

It was a great summer with great music, and with Frenzy(for the Hitchcock fan I was) was a great surprise.

Happy 50th, Frenzy...you sick, twisted old man's shocker, you.