March, 2024 - The Rare Review

Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) is excellently directed rubbish, without even the gripping force of Psycho and The Birds. Anthony Shaffer’s script has to do with a psychopathic rapist-murderer in London, and there’s nothing wrong with the movie’s realism per se. But, directorially, the man obsessed with and rebuffed by Tippi Hedren (and others?) is intent on getting even with women, and this renders the film loathsome. Murdered females lie dead with their tongues hanging out. The corpses of women are desecrated in one way or another, and female nudity is somewhat overdone. Every woman but Vivien Merchant—Merchant is too good for this tripe—is at least close to being bitchy.

Shaffer’s writing is far less than first-rate, but morally the film itself is barely third-rate.

Cover of Frenzy

Characterization in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) is not exactly ideal, but Martin McDonagh‘s film is spiky and probing and absorbing all the same. Here, on an isle off the coast of Ireland in the 1920s, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), chooses pragmatism over morality and good manners by suddenly dropping his close friendship with the “dull”—but usually inoffensive—Padraic (Colin Farrell). Padraic refuses to accept this and mopes a lot.

As with Madame Bovary, there is provincial boredom and disconnectedness. There is loneliness. The “banshees” of the isle, Inisherin, do not scream to herald the death of a family member, but they’re there. They’re represented by a disagreeable old woman called Mrs. McCormick. Death? Along with one literal human death, there is on the isle the death of hope. Colm tells the local priest he is still harboring despair. Indeed, clutching to himself a kind of pragmatism makes sense, but it is still a bad choice. Banshees is a painful tragicomedy from an artist who has come a long way since his limp play The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

Movies, books, music and TV

Month: March 2024

Hitchcock Gets Even With Women: 1972’s “Frenzy”

Those Silently Screaming Banshees Of Inisherin