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am I the only one who thought this was gonna happen?

posted 4 months ago by filmgeek99 (657)
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During all those scenes of Inspector Oxford having conversation with his wife over dinner, did anyone else expect there to be a revelation that the food she had made was actually the flesh of one of Rusk's victims?

Those scenes were there, I suppose, for a bit of comic relief, but the whole time I had this sudden sense of dread that he was gonna find an eyeball on his plate or something. It wouldn't have made much sense, of course, as how could the grocers not notice the sight of a grown woman's body in one of the bags of potatoes, but it would've been a shocking reveal.

Did anyone else expect this to happen?

[–] KaiMaster (902) 4 months ago

That would've been grotesque LOL.

[–] roger1 (3617) 3 months ago

No, I can't say that exactly.

Maybe it would have been a more natural consequence of Rear Window(where the killer chops his murdered wife up into pieces for distribution in the Hudson River) or even Psycho (where the killer uses a big carving knife on the victims.)

But the killer in Frenzy is a strangler.

That said, the hideous meals prepared by Mrs. Oxford are often very "telling" of the dismemberment of the animals killed to make the food -- a pig's foot, a fish eye -- unidentifable pieces of something floating up out of the soup -- so we are probably being SYMBOLLICALLY REMINDED of the bodies of Rusk's victims.

Moreover, whenever Rusk kills a woman -- and we see the results -- a living, breathing, human being becomes a lifeless object -- "waste to be disposed of" (in the Thames River, among potatoes being driven for burial in the ground, in a steamer trunk.)

Food, waste matter, dead bodies -- it all interrelates in the dense thematic mix of Hitchcock at his best...