We began 50 columns ago with Hitchcock’s VERTIGO, so I thought it fitting to return to The Master of Suspense for my anniversary with his second-to-last film and one of his underappreciated masterpieces, FRENZY. Dark and disturbing, but rich with some of Hitch’s blackest, funniest comedy, it showcases the talents of a director some fifty years into a career in moviemaking with a knowledge of the medium that rivals that of any person in history. Any other director, even a skilled one, would have had trouble turning this material into anything other than a predictable genre picture. Hitchcock elevated it to a work of art.

A serial killer is stalking London, strangling beautiful young women with a variety of neckties. All the evidence points to Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), an unemployed barman with a bad temper and a hideous wardrobe. We know that Blaney is innocent because we see the killer in action; he is a fruit merchant named Robert Rusk (Barry Foster). But the police, led by Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen) are convinced of Blaney’s guilt. Blaney, who isn’t a particularly bright fellow, must figure out who the killer is before Oxford catches him.

In FRENZY, Hitchcock returned to the potent “Wrong Man” theme of so many of his early spy thrillers. In a wrong man film, an innocent is caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and is accused of a crime he did not commit, almost always murder, whereupon he goes on the run from the law, trying to catch the criminals and prove his innocence before the police catch him. FRENZY also evolves from the model of 1951’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, in which two men - a bland hero played by Farley Granger and a compelling psychopath played by Robert Walker - agree to exchange murders. Hitchcock loved STRANGERS ON A TRAIN because the casting of the two lead roles made the villain a more interesting character than the hero, and so in many scenes we actively root for his success. FRENZY takes it a step further; Finch’s Blaney isn’t bland, he’s flat-out unlikable, a drunken oaf with a rage problem. Rusk, on the other hand, is well-spoken and dresses nicely. He’s even charming and witty in his early scenes.

Hitchcock ingeniously switches the narrative focus between Blaney, Rusk, and Inspector Oxford so our allegiances to the characters are constantly in a state of flux. In FRENZY’s most famous sequence, Rusk disposes of a victim’s body, but realizes that he has left his distinctive tie pin in the victim’s hand. If he does not retrieve the pin, the police will have evidence that he is the Necktie Murderer. So he sneaks into the back of the truck where he dumped the body, and digs through a sack of potatoes to find the body and the pin, all while the truck is moving and trashing him about. As the quest becomes more and more complex, we become further and further invested in Rusk, even though he is trying to cover up his involvement in the murder of the most likable character in the film. Acknowledging the absurdity of the event and of his own staging of it, Hitchcock even plays the scene for laughs, as rigor mortis makes the body unmanageable with and sends a corpse’s foot up Rusk’s nose. You won’t believe how funny a bodily disposal by a deranged psychosexual maniac can be until you’ve seen FRENZY.

The floating focus also gives several terrific scenes to Oxford and his gourmet chef wife, who serves him all sorts of distasteful looking delicacies while listening to the current details of the case. Hitchcock almost always used his wrong man thrillers as a way to work through his lifelong paranoia about wrongful imprisonment and FRENZY shows how well-meaning, hardworking policemen using all of their powers and a careful investigation can still send the wrong man to jail. Inspector Oxford is a good man and a good police officer, but he’s after an innocent man. FRENZY humanizes the police officer in such a way that further complicates our conception of how to view a film and who to root for in it. Do we root for him? Or for the loathsome Blaney? Or the murderous Rusk? What’s fascinating is the lack of a “correct” answer to those questions; the audience is left to choose who they want to root for, and in many cases, their choice will change from scene to scene.

An R-rated picture in the United States, FRENZY contained some of Hitchcock’s most most intense scenes of violence and his only scenes of graphic nudity. But it also featured some of his most profoundly simple moments as well. Its first murder is grizzly, but its second occurs off-screen, employing a single, silent shot to portray the tragedy of a murder and society’s helplessness to stop it. If we make it to 100 columns, maybe I’ll share my least favorite Hitchcock film with you.

IF YOU LIKED FRENZY, CHECK OUT: THE 39 STEPS (1935), the prototype for decades of Hitchcock’s wrong man spy thrillers and one of Hitchcock’s very best early films.

THE BAD

SLACKERS is a lazy movie with a lazy title. The three main characters in the film are cheaters, liars, and jerks, but they are actively and creatively mischievous and by no means “slackers.” If a slacker had a test he would simply not study and fail; these bozos take down electrical grids, call in bomb threats, anything not to do their work. And they’re quite good at what they do. Proving my rule that no good movie has more than one alternate or working title SLACKERS had five: The Best and Brightest, The Hook-Up, Hooking Up Ethan, Scam, and The Undergrads. Any of those would have been more appropriate than SLACKERS. So would my suggested title: Boring Generic Gross-Out College Comedy.

The Ethan referred to in one of the alternate titles is played by RUSHMORE’s Jason Schwartzman, a movie which is to SLACKERS as filet mignon is to dog food. Ethan is a crazy, hyperactive nerd, who pines for a beautiful girl in his class named Angela (James King). When he catches Dave (Devon Sawa) cheating on a test, he uses the evidence to blackmail Dave and his buddies (played by Jason Segal and Michael Maronna) to help him win Angela’s heart. Of course Dave falls for Angela while he’s trying to convince her to go out with Ethan and Ethan doesn’t take it very kindly.

Essentially, what we have here is a stalker comedy. Anything can be played for laughs - THE PRODUCERS makes you laugh at the Holocaust - but the key is how the humor is executed. And director Dewey Nicks and writer David H. Steinberg make Ethan scary, not funny. Shaving your chest hair into an A is not funny; neither is using a lint roller on a girl’s chair to search for stray hairs to add to your hairdoll. Neither is urinating in the shower. Neither is assaulting and berating a hobo. Neither is stealing Jell-O from an invalid. And so on. Once again, all these things could be funny... but they’re not here. Simply urinating in the shower is not funny - perhaps urinating on someone in the shower would be a step in the right direction. Schwartzman could do no wrong in RUSHMORE, but he’s way too excited here. He pulls off Ethan’s aggravating side, but none of his so-called humor.

There are a few chuckles along the way, all from Freaks and Geeks’ Jason Segal as Sam, arguably the best stoner persona actor of his generation. But for those paltry laughs you must endure 86 pain-filled minutes of unfunny gags and slo-mo romance. That’s like getting to keep the steering wheel when the repo man takes your car. No thanks, I’ll go watch ANIMAL HOUSE again.

Why is it so hard to do college comedy? While there are plenty of failed high school teen comedies, there are a lot more funny ones as well; whereas the vast majority of college comedy falls right on its face. One factor has to be the unrealistic portrayal of college that these movies - and especially SLACKERS - often create. Consider the scene where Dave and Angela sneak into the pool house for a late night swim and then sex on a makeshift bed of towels. What school leaves the pool unlocked late at night? What school leaves lots of fluffy white towels out after hours? What school even has nice white towels instead of dirty slimy prison-style ones? There’s nothing romantic or sexy about intercourse on the floor of the pool house unless you get turned on by the smell of chlorine and a case full body foot fungus.

The true slackers here were the filmmakers who didn’t bother making likable characters or funny jokes. And whoever at Screen Gems selected the most ill-fitting of the six titles they had to choose from. If you’re thinking about renting SLACKERS just be a slacker instead; don’t bother getting out of your chair and going to the video store. Go play video games or something.

INSTEAD OF SLACKERS, CHECK OUT: SAVED BY THE BELL: THE COLLEGE YEARS (1993), to show it isn’t any easier to do college on television.

THE UGLY

“An ancient Aztec legend tells of a God who descended to Earth from the stars at the dawn of time and became father to the first Pumaman.”

So begins one of my favorite ugly films, maybe the funniest bad superhero movie of all time, 1980’s The Pumaman. I’m not an expert on ancient Aztec legends, but I find that statement suspect - Pumamen? Really? Even if the Aztecs did believe in alien-fueled dudes with Puma powers, I have to think they didn’t expect them to look like they do in this shoddy Italian-American production. If they’d seen this, they may have had to rethink their whole belief system and choose something more believable like, say, scientology.

The voiceover that accompanies that title card also informs us that The Pumaman is “a man with the blood of a God in his veins... a Pumaman.” Then, for really dramatic effect, the voice repeats over and over “The Pumaman... The Pumaman... The Pumaman.” As far as I’m aware, pumas are fairly indigenous to Earth, and not found on other planets, even the ones inhabited by Aztec gods, but again, I only took one undergraduate course on Central American Intergalactic Dieties, so I’m a bit rusty.

Walter George Alton plays Tony Farms, a paleontologist at a European university. With the help of a kooky mystic named Vadinho (Miguel Angel Fuentes), he discovers he is the latest in the long line of Pumamen, whose duty is to protect a mystical mask from the forces of evil. Initially, Tony is hesitant to trust Vadinho, particularly because in their first encounter the large Aztec tosses Tony out of a third story window. Later, Tony, still unconvinced that this man is trying to help him rather than kill him, tries to escape in his car but Vadinho holds on to the back bumper keeps the car in place. Tony desperately needs his ride pimped.

To combat his enemies, The Pumaman is given a variety of useless and poorly executed superpowers. When trouble is afoot he gets a throbbing headache, warning concerned onlookers that, “I get this way when I sense danger.” In darkness, he can see in infrared. Well, he can see in red anyway, as point-of-view shots are toned a deep red. He can walk through walls, though sometimes he messes that power up and crashes through them. He doesn’t have super-strength, but he can fly, or at least the best approximation of flying one can muster on such limited budget and cinematic talent. It’s difficult to put into words the exquisite delight one takes in watching Tony flail about in front of an unconvincing blue screen while chipper synthesizer music plays in the background. Even Vadinho, who is supposed to provide advice and spiritual guidance, can’t even bring himself to soft-peddle his criticism. “You are the worst I have ever seen,” he tells Tony and he means it.

In sum, The Pumaman can sense danger, see in the dark (and develop photographs with his gaze), walk through certain walls, and fly like Iron Man right after he falls off the wagon. Are any of those powers related in any way to a puma? Pumas are jungle cats right? The black ones? Maybe pumas used to be able to fly but they didn’t do it for a while so evolution got rid of their wings (Look at least I’m trying to explain this. The film just wants us to accept flying pumas at face value).

Tony’s nemesis is a delightfully hammy Donald Pleasence, playing a power-mad, vinyl-loving psycho named Kobras. Kobras enjoys making vaguely threatening statements at chubby pompous white people, and dressing from head to toe in shiny black vinyl and leather. Now, as we all know, you’ve got to powder pants like this before you put them on. From Kobras’ surly demeanor it’s obvious he is taking out his groinal discomfort by trying to take over the world. Pleasence is clearly depressed to be in a film of such low quality - his named is even misspelled in the credits! - and doesn’t even bother to correctly pronounce his nemesis’ name. He constantly calls him the “P’you-muh-man,” which calls for the image of a different hero, one whose powers lie in his revolting body odor. I think I once roomed with “P’you-muh-man.”

When Vadinho is counciling young Tony on the ways of the Pumaman and proper fashion techniques - always select a cape that folds down into an inconspicuous poncho for everyday wear - he offers nuggets of Aztec wisdom and even suggests that there are other pumamen out there. “Man men have received special powers from the sky. But they do not know it.” he says. How I hope and pray I am one of the lucky few. I can’t wait for the day when a scary Aztec dude shows up at my door and chases me around then dumps me out of a window and I learn how to fly like a drunk and walk through walls. It’s gonna be sweet.

IF YOU LIKED THE PUMAMAN, CHECK OUT: ORGAZMO (1997), Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s awesome superhero/porn spoof.