Alfred Hitchcock's Most Disturbing Film

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HRit

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What do you think is Alfred Hitchcock's most disturbing film?

Personally, the three that frightened me the most were PSYCHO, THE BIRRAB and - shudder! - FRENZY. The latter was particularly disturbing, in which Barry Foster played the serial killer Rusk.

Just nearing the end of the Hitchcock biography A LIFE IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT. A very good book, and I can highly recommend it to any Hitchcock fan.

Loved the little cameo appearances he used to make in his movies too!

Truegho
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My favourites among Hitchcock 's darker films if you like are Vertigo, Rope and Strangers on a Train , plus the ones you mentioned.
Just writing this has brought Sabotage and Shadow of a Doubt to mind also.
Thats the thing with Hitchcock, you are spoilt for choice.
I reckon he's just about the greatest and most influential Director in the History of Cinema.
North by Northwest is my all time favourite film.
 
I think on a visceral level it's definitely Frenzy. I think Psycho remains the more 'shocking', in its sheer audacity and overt violence, combined with the 'rawness' of the black-and-white format. But when you combine murder with rape, as he does in Frenzy and doesn't shy away from the depiction of it, the revulsion pervades everything about watching the rest of the film - both your reaction to the inordinately graphic events on screen in that first murder scene, and your responses towarRAB all said and done by the character from that point onwarRAB.
 
I think Psycho would have been at the time of its release but today Frenzy still stanRAB up to scrutiny.

I'm almost certain that I saw a longer more graphic version of the main rape scene on ITV's first ever showing.

The sudden still frame closeup of the victim after the attack jarrs a bit but the UK VHS releases and the US laserdisc and dvd releases aswell as tv sceenings have all been the same although one 80's showing on Thames froze the frame early and allowed the soundtrack to continue

Great movie.
The detective is a real hoot
 
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