Oh My Horror 2025 | 49/52 | 70s Horror
You know, sometimes just thinking about the lusts of men makes me want to heave.
Ah, London, the city that never sleeps. Sir George holds a press conference to announce a citywide effort to clean the Thames of industrial waste. Among the onlookers is Hitchcock, disappointed that he must return to murder and the wrongly accused after the failure of his previous two films. Speaking of murder, a man glances into the Thames and calls out, spotting a nude, dead woman with a tie around her neck—another necktie murder. Sir George recognizes the tie as belonging to his club.
Richard Blaney dons his tie and heads downstairs to work at a pub. His boss walks in to catch Richard taking a morning swig of gin. The boss fires him, despite coworker Babs coming to his defense. Ol Dick stops by his friend Bob Rusk’s produce stand in Covent Garden to tell Bob about his firing, then stops by another pub for a drink. Looking for a bad time, Richard stops by his ex-wife Brenda’s matchmaking service. He gives her the rundown of his unlucky day, and she invites him to dinner on her dime. Drunk, he makes a scene at dinner, yelling about his lack of luck in love, accidentally breaking a glass in the process. That night, he sleeps at a Salvation Army shelter. He finds some cash in his coat, which Brenda had placed there.
The next day, Bob Rusk stops by Brenda’s dating agency, although Brenda refers to him as Mr. Robinson. She reminds Bob that the agency cannot help him because it has no women willing to submit to his “certain proclivities.” Bob confesses his feelings for Brenda. She tries to get away, but he pins her down, SAs her, and strangles her with a necktie. After he leaves, Richard stops by, knocks, but receives no answer. The secretary returns from lunch just in time to see Richard leaving the building and to discover Brenda’s body.
In my job, I've learned to keep a sharp eye on men.
This film is far and away the most lurid Hitchcock movie I’ve seen. The spotting of the first dead woman in the Thames, nude with a tie around her neck, is both icy cold and horny. The first on-screen SA scene is one of the most unsettling I’ve seen, and certainly the most graphic in a Hitchcock movie. No subtlety, multiple closeups. There’s even some pubic hair sightings throughout.
That said, the movie isn’t totally indulgent. When moments of discovery unfold, the camera shies away, sometimes even pulling back, as if it doesn’t want to be there. It knows what we know and can’t bear to see it. Boobs, bush, legs, and whatnot — yes. Murder? Once is enough.
The film serves as a metaphor for a changing London and the massive redevelopment plans of the Greater London Council, displacing residents and businesses to make way for high-rises, hotels, and wider roads. To Hitchcock, whose father was a Covent Garden merchant, these redevelopments are akin to the murder of what was beautiful about London. Part of his motivation in making this film was to document the area as it was before all these changes occurred.
The film portrays all the higher-ups as cocksure morons. It also makes a joke of Scotland Yard. In one pub, the audience overhears two Yard detectives working the necktie murder case, lamenting the police’s inability to handle psychopaths like the one committing these murders, joking about SA and how murder is good for tourism. When we meet one of their wives, she calls his logic into immediate question, all while serving him exotic food a la Temple of Doom. She’s my favorite character!
At first, I was apprehensive about calling this a classic Hitchcock. But as the movie went on, its choices became all the more compelling. At times, the film has legitimate moments of suspense and tension. And the humor doesn’t feel in poor taste. I came away surprised and delighted by how effective the movie is.
Leave it to the Brits to find a Margarita too exotic.