This is probably my least favourite Hitchcock story. It is still cleverly constructed, but somehow it has a vulgarity to it that I rather struggled with. The premiss is a serial killer who has been brutally killing women using a neck tie, then dumping their bodies. The police are baffled until "Brenda Blaney" (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) is found raped and killed in her office, and suspicion falls on her ex husband "Dick" (Jon Finch). He flees, is apprehended and judicial process takes it's course. We all know who actually killed "Brenda" so insofar as this is a murder mystery, then that's that. It is, though, quite a curious character study of the mind of a man who is jovial and engaging one moment, then brutally lethal the next - a sort of deadly schizophrenia that might be borne out of sexual frustration, or misogyny, childhood - all of the above? Barry Foster is efficient, if a little lightweight as "Rusk" and there are enthusiastic efforts from Anna Massey and pub landlord Bernard Cribbins. What raises this (slightly) above the norm, is the fun sub-plot between Alec McGowen ("Chief Insp. Oxford") and his wife Vivien Merchant - she a budding gourmet who seems intent on offering the poor man the most complex dishes when all he wants is pie and mash; and - as ever with Hitch - intimate and clever use of the camera. What suspense there is all comes to a rather weak head, I felt, and though this is still an eminently watchable film, it is all just a little bit tacky, and it lacks much that made it's director great. It might have worked better in black and white?
