Development After a pair of unsuccessful films depicting political intrigue and espionage, Hitchcock returned to the murder genre with this film. The narrative makes use of the familiar Hitchcock theme of an innocent man overwhelmed by circumstantial evidence and wrongly assumed to be guilty. was the flat of the "Necktie Murderer", Robert Rusk Hitchcock announced the project in March 1968. Hitchcock approached
Vladimir Nabokov to write the script, but the author turned him down because he was busy on a book. He then hired Anthony Shaffer. "It will be done comedically", said Hitchcock. The film starred relative newcomers in the lead roles. "I prefer a fresh face", he said. Barry Foster has said that, in order to prepare for his role, he was asked by Hitchcock to study two books about
Neville Heath, an English double murderer who would often pass himself off as an officer in the RAF.
Filming Filming began in July 1971. Hitchcock shot
Frenzy in London after many years making films in the United States. The film opens with a sweeping shot along the
Thames to
Tower Bridge; and while the interior scenes were filmed at
Pinewood Studios, much of the location filming was done in and around
Covent Garden and was a homage to the London of Hitchcock's childhood. The son of a Covent Garden merchant himself, Hitchcock filmed several key scenes showing the area as the working produce market it was. Aware that the area's days as a market were numbered, Hitchcock wanted to record the area as he remembered it. According to the "making-of" feature on the DVD, an elderly man who remembered Hitchcock's father as a dealer in the vegetable market came to visit the set during the filming and was treated to lunch by the director. No. 31,
Ennismore Gardens Mews, was used as the home of Brenda Margaret Blaney during the filming of
Frenzy. During shooting for the film, Hitchcock's wife and long-time collaborator Alma had a stroke. As a result, some sequences were shot without Hitchcock on the set so he could tend to his wife.
Frenzy was the first Hitchcock film to contain nudity (with the arguable exception of the shower scene in
Psycho). The nude scenes used body doubles in place of Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Anna Massey. The nude scene which shows the first victim being raped and strangled was called by
Donald Spoto "one of the most repellent examples of a detailed murder in the history of film". There are a number of classic Hitchcock
set pieces in the film, particularly the long tracking shot down the stairs when Babs is murdered. The camera moves down the stairs, out of the doorway (with a rather clever edit just after the camera exits the door which marks where the scene moves from the studio to the location footage) and across the street, where the usual activity in the market district goes on with patrons unaware that a murder is occurring in the building. A second sequence set in the back of a delivery truck full of potatoes increases the suspense, as the murderer Rusk attempts to retrieve his tie pin from the corpse of Babs. Rusk struggles with the hand and has to break the fingers of the corpse in order to retrieve his tie pin and try to escape unseen from the truck. The part of London shown in the film still exists more or less intact, but the fruit and vegetable market no longer operates from that site, having relocated in 1974. The buildings seen in the film are now occupied by banks and legal offices, restaurants and nightclubs, such as Henrietta Street, where Rusk lived (and Babs met her untimely demise).
Oxford Street, which had the back alley (Dryden Chambers, now demolished) leading to Brenda Blaney's matrimonial agency, is the busiest shopping area in Britain. Nell of Old Drury, which is the public house where the doctor and solicitor had their frank, plot-assisting discussion on sex killers, is still a thriving bar. The lanes where merchants and workers once carried their produce, as seen in the film, are now occupied by tourists and street performers. In a 29 May 1972 letter to the editor of
The Times, novelist La Bern said he found Hitchcock's production and Shaffer's adaptation of his book "appalling", concluding: "Finally, I wish to dissociate myself with Mr Shaffer's grotesque misrepresentation of
Scotland Yard offices."
Soundtrack Henry Mancini was originally hired as the film's composer. "If the same film was made ten years ago it would've had twice the amount of music in it", he said. His opening theme was written in
Bachian organ
andante, opening in
D minor, for organ and an orchestra of strings and brass, and was intended to express the formality of the grey London landmarks, but Hitchcock thought it sounded too much like
Bernard Herrmann's scores. According to Mancini, "Hitchcock came to the recording session, listened awhile and said: 'Look, if I want Herrmann, I'd ask for Herrmann. After an enigmatic, behind-the-scenes melodrama, the composer was fired. He never understood the experience, insisting that his score sounded nothing like Herrmann's work. Mancini had to pay all transportation and accommodation costs himself. In his autobiography, Mancini reports that the discussions between himself and Hitchcock seemed clear, and he thought he understood what was wanted; but he was replaced and flew back home to Hollywood. The irony was that Mancini was being second-guessed for being too dark and symphonic after having been criticised for being too light before. Mancini's experience with
Frenzy was a painful topic for the composer for years to come. Hitchcock then hired composer
Ron Goodwin to write the score after being impressed with some of his earlier work. He had Goodwin rescore the opening titles in the style of a London travelogue; the director had heard his score for the Peter Sellers sketch
Balham, Gateway to the South. Goodwin's music had a lighter tone in the opening scenes, and scenes featuring London scenery, while there were darker undertones in certain other scenes. In 2023, Quartet Records issued a soundtrack album featuring both the Goodwin score and the unused Mancini score. ==Reception==