Hitchcock arranged a private screening of this when it came out and left furious and depressed. Supposedly he said, "I'm an aging dinosaur" He was inspired by Blowup and wanted to REALLY bust loose and 'push the envelope' but the studio wanted to stick him with 'stars' and 'safe' projects and 'bestsellers' hence one dated turkey after another.
Frenzy is not that bad.
HI-F___ING-YA
Nicholas Cage Deadfall
Films 2015: www.imdb.com/list/ls073224289/
He really put his mark on Frenzy, I agree.
shareTopaz is NOT a safe movie for Universal to make. Not only does it feature no stars, almost all of it's actors are Europeans unknown to American audiences. John Forsythe and Roscoe Lee Browne were the only American actors who audiences had some familiarity with, but they were hardly big draws.
Hitchcock knew he was "an aging dinosaur" two years earlier when Tippi Hedren declined his sexual overtures . . . . allegedly.
Hitchcock never worked with "stars" after his disastrous experience with Newman and Andrews on Torn Curtain (made before Blow-Up), so based on that comment alone, your arguments don't hold water.
shareThe stars were not the point - his pet project Kaleidoscope was so ferocious and daring that it freaked out the execs.
shareThe 1966 Kaleidoscope? That was directed by Jack Smight.
shareSame title very diff film. All that exists of Hitchcock are some test shot scenes aboard a very creepy empty ocean liner
shareWhat year? I've read everything ever printed on Hitchcock, and I've never heard of it. Hitchcock had planned, for years, a ghost ship movie about the Marie Celeste, but it wasn't called Kaleidoscope.
shareFrom Truffaut's interview book with Hitchcock:
https://books.google.com/books?id=NnE_sPb3XBQC&pg=PA248&lpg=PA248&dq=alfred+hitchcock+marie+celeste&source=bl&ots=C_6INFjoQQ&sig=-Q8xcaRCRda4nuS1atpcmCBkPGU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiX46na7pTMAhWDFj4KHRM9DvgQ6AEIMDAD#v=onepage&q=alfred%20hitchcock%20marie%20celeste&f=false
I just did some research, and found this. Since Hitchcock did some very cursory filming, without sound, on the Mothball Fleet, the ship was hardly an ocean liner. According to this site, Universal execs weren't freaked out; Lew Wasserman's opinion was that it wasn't "commercial".
http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Kaleidoscope