Well, Hitchcock made a lot of movies with one-word titles:
Rebecca
Suspicion
Rope
Psycho
Marnie
Topaz
Indeed, the movie that was released as "Family Plot" began as "Deceit" in a concerted effort to make a "classic Hitchcock one-word title."
Sometimes,the novel from which Hitchcock worked had the one-word title to start with: Psycho. Topaz.
But Frenzy began as a novel entitled, "Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leiceister Square" and ended up with a one-word title that, I believe, was meant to bring back memories of Hitchcock's big psycho-killer hit: Psycho.
Indeed, one thing I like to note is:
Psycho could have been called "Frenzy"(Mrs Bates kills in a frenzy)
"Frenzy" could have been called "Psycho"(Rusk is a psycho.)
But Psycho is now the much more famous Hitchcock title.
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Hitchcock's London-based "Frenzy" came out in 1972, but he had actually sought that title for a New York-based thriller he wanted to make in 1967, about a young killer of women and his Broadway-star mother(Ingrid Bergman was contemplated for that role.) Universal rejected the 1967 "Frenzy" but when Hitchcock found the novel "Goodbye, Picadilly, Farewell Leiceister Square" in 1970(it was a 1966 book)...it inherited the title, "Frenzy."
I like the title "Frenzy." "Frenzy" is a word that turns up in newspaper headlines and everyday speech all the time, it has "punch." And Rusk both kills in a frenzy and searches his flat for the tiepin in a frenzy. The movie "enacts the title."
But, for the record, for awhile, "Frenzy" had this working title on its script copies:
"Necktie."
Better?
Doubtful.
"Alfred Hitchcock's Necktie" would sound like a description.
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