Frenzy filming locations
Film locations: London
Frenzy filming location: villain Robert Rusk’s place: 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London
Blaney takes his barmaid friend Babs (Anna Massey) to the Hilton Hyde Park, 129 Bayswater Road, alongside Queensway tube station opposite Hyde park, where they check in as Mr and Mrs Oscar Wilde. This is where Blaney is recognised but nevertheless manages to make his escape before the law arrives.
At the time of filming this was the Coburg Hotel. Coincidentally, London’s other Hilton hotel, the London Hilton, 22 Park Lane, is where Blaney goes to ask for help from his old RAF chum Johnny Porter (Clive Swift), despite suspicious wife Hetty (Billie Whitelaw – the creepy nanny from The Omen).
Frenzy filming location: Blaney and Babs check into the old Coburg Hotel: the Hilton Hyde Park, Bayswater Road, Bayswater, London
Opposite the Hilton Park Lane is the tiny patch of grass where Babs meets up with Blaney after his escape from the Coburg.
I don't have to post a 'spoiler' alert – this isn't a whodunit. Hitchcock reveals the identity of the killer early on. The flat of ‘necktie strangler’ Robert Rusk (Barry Foster), where Hitchcock pulls off the eerie silent tracking shot up and down the stairs, is 3 Henrietta Street (main picture, top). Notice the barely perceptible cut as a porter carrying a sack of potatoes passes in front of the camera – the interior is a studio set.
Frenzy filming location: Brenda Blaney's flat: Ennismore Garden Mews, Knightsbridge, London
The home of doomed Brenda Blaney is 31 Ennismore Gardens Mews, tucked away in a maze of streets in South Kensington. From another era of British film altogether, 17 Rutland Mews South was home to John Gregson and Dinah Sheridan in the cosy 1953 comedy classic Genevieve. If you were wondering, ëmewsí were originally stables, the name deriving from the sound of falcons that were kept alongside horses.
There’s another bravura Hitchcock sequence at Brenda’s marriage bureau, after she is raped and strangled (in the director's most disturbingly graphic scene). When Brenda's secretary returns from lunch, Hitchcock holds the still shot of the exterior for an astonishingly long time before releasing the tension with a scream.
Frenzy filming location: wrought ironwork on Oxford Street is the only reminder of the alleyway: Oxford Street, London
Unfortunately, the little alleyway running south from Oxford Street, on which the bureau stood, has now gone. It’s been incorporated into a shop (ownership seems to change regularly), though you can still see its elaborate wrought-iron arch above 119 Oxford Street near the southeast corner of Wardour Street.
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Frenzy, 1972
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
London: Flights: Heathrow Airport; Gatwick Airport
Covent Garden: tube: Covent Garden (Piccadilly line) The name Covent Garden is a corrupted reference to the old convent garden which once occupied the area.
This was once one of the capitalís three great produce markets: Billingsgate for fish, Smithfield for meat and Covent Garden for fruit, veg and flowers. It was a world in itself; one of the few places where the UK ís stringent licensing laws were officially relaxed, allowing porters to down a pint at the civilised hour of six in the morning. In 1973, though, the whole operation moved to a soulless new facility at Nine Elms, south of the Thames near Vauxhall, and the old market buildings were titivated to become terrace cafÈs and boutiques.
Trivia
Alfred Hitchcock’s last London film had been The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956