Celluloid Heroes

Do I look like a sex murderer to you? Can you imagine me creeping around London, strangling all those women with ties? That’s ridiculous. For a start, I only own two.

Frenzy marked several returns for Alfred Hitchcock. First, he was going back to his native England where he had not worked for decades. More significantly, he was filming in the marketplace at Covent Garden, where his father had worked as a green grocer. It was also a return to the basic theme that had informed he best work, that of the innocent man wrongfully accused. The final return was to the top of his form that had seemed to be missing for several years. After two films dabbling with international intrigue, Torn Curtain and Topaz, Frenzy was the sort of more grounded and personal suspense tale at which he had always excelled.

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There… is… no… sanctuary.

Picture this: three friends are taking in the 1998 comedy Free Enterprise. We represent about half the audience in the theater. The film, which deals with a pair of lifelong science fiction geeks facing their 30th birthdays, has a dream sequence that begins with a very specific, recognizable throbbing noise. The three friends collapse in hysterical laughter while the other half of the audience sits in confused, stony silence. The difference between the two parties is that the three who are laughing have seen Logan’s Run, probably more than once.

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