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Bob Rusk: Hitchcock's First Technicolor Psycho

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Allowing for a couple of possible exceptions (neither of which I really believe in as such), I believe that Alfred Hitchcock gave his audiences "one psycho killer per decade" from the forties through the seventies, each more graphically portrayed in the savagery of his murder techniques, as each decade loosened movie censorship more and more.

These are the four:

THE FORTIES: "Uncle Charlie Oakley" (Joseph Cotton in Shadow of a Doubt, 1943) Scarily psychotic in his speeches about why rich widows should be murdered(their husbands worked hard and died, they puttered on "eating the money...drinking the money') and how horrible the world is ("The world's a sty...if you pulled the roofs off of those houses, you'd find swine")....Uncle Charlie is a strangler who is never shown strangling anybody. We IMAGINE his horrible crimes.

THE FIFTIES: "Bruno Anthony" (Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train, 1951.) Right behind Norman Bates as the greatest Hitchcock psycho in fame, perhaps a bit ahead of Norman in "this is the villain" impact(Norman's guilt is hidden until the end), Robert Walker played the nutty rich overgrown kid as a psycho of equal parts comedy and menace. Yes, he played Bruno rather gay(plotwise, he is "courting" hero Guy Haynes) but he also proved a macho seducer at the fairgrounds in luring Guy's slutty wife Miriam into his gloved hands. This time, we DO see the brutality of the strangling -- at least the beginning of it -- until the murder becomes distorted art in the lenses of Miriam's eyeglasses. The brutality of Bruno's crime haunts the rest of the movie -- he's never so funny again.

THE SIXTIES: "Norman Bates"(Anthony Perkins in Psycho, 1960). The most famous name in Hitchcock, and his most famous villain (though to first time audiences, we don't think he's a villain at all, or at least not a killer -- he seems to be his mother's accomplice after the fact.) The two Psycho stabbings -- each carried out as more of a slaughter than a murder, with the big butcher knife suggesting the horror as much as the minimal blood -- were landmark in every way: visuals, music, graphicness, brutality. Yes, its the shower murder that is more famous(a beautiful naked woman, and...everybody takes a shower sometime), but the second murder was, in theaters, much bigger in bringing on an audience scream that just got bigger and bigger and bigger as the male private eye got his face slashed, a surreal staircase stumble, and a finishing off at on the foyer floor(courtesy of an obscenely vicious and strong old lady.)

Norman Bates was a hard act to follow, and after a few failed attempts in movies that were never made, Hitchcock gave us one more psycho killer in the R-rated seventies: dapper, well-tailored London greengrocer Bob Rusk ...

THE SEVENTIES: "Bob Rusk" (Barry Foster in Frenzy, 1972.) Like Uncle Charlie and Bruno Anthony, Rusk was yet another strangler -- Norman's butcher knife stabbing/slashings proved historic in their division away from Hitchcock's preferred murder method. And whereas we never saw Charlie strangle anyone, and we only saw the start of Bruno's strangling of Miriam, we saw Bob Rusk strangle his totally innocent victim, Brenda Blaney, with a necktie, from start to finish, in all its dreadful intimacy and lingering brutality.

Worse yet -- as allowed under the seventies R rating -- before Rusk strangled Brenda, he raped her(or impotently tried to) and Hitchcock thus gave us his absolute worst psycho, ever.

Uncle Charlie, Bruno and Norman were all famous in their own way. Rusk was played a British near-no-name after Michael Caine (somewhat a Foster lookalike and Cockney soundalike) turned the role down.

Yes, Rusk committed the most sexual, repulsive and lingering murder in Hitchcock but...weirdly..he had other identifiable traits all his own. First of all, he was a cheery fellow who seems to be friends with everybody in the fruit and vegetable market in Covent Garden. "Bob's your uncle," he always says, and EVERYBODY likes him. Norman Bates with shy and withdraw and hidden away from society; Bruno Anthony revealed his madness and put people off on first meeting every time; Uncle Charlie was loved by the widow ladies and respected in his community but--always, clearly cold and aloof and MEAN...its as if the family members he is visiting refuse to see the monster who reveals himself from the get-go ("Wheezing fat widows!")

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

But Bob Rusk? He'll tell you a joke, buy you a drink, give you a tip on a horse or some free grapes from his grocer's trade. Barry Foster has almost as much fun playing the cheery Rusk as showing us Rusk's horrific dark side when he rapes and kills his on-screen victim(its the "latest" of his many killings as the Necktie Strangler terrorizing modern-day London.) Rusk almost has as much of a dual personality as Norman Bates; when the monster emerges, all of Rusk's false cheer disappears and is replaced by a leering, almost goony madman with a horrible sexual side and a drive to kill women.

It took a couple of viewings of Frenzy, however, to realize something about Barry Foster as Bob Rusk. Uncle Charlie, Bruno Anthony and Norman Bates all appeared in BLACK AND WHITE films. And Psycho was a black and white film in an era with mainly color movies --- the black and white was a bit weird.

By 1972, Hitchcock knew that he had to deliver a color film, and he seems to have made some decisions accordingly.

Rusk's hair, for instance. It isn't black or brown or even blond. Its rather a butterscotch blend of red AND blond, long and with sideburns in the 1972 tradition, and curled for somewhat flamboyant effect. Rusk's red-blond hair will be photographed twice against a blue background -- the mottled blue glass of Brenda Blaney's inner office door when he kills her; the royal blue night sky of London as a potato truck speed through the knife with the body of his next victim aboard. Along with Rusk, his now golden hair contrasted with the blue night sky(and aligned with the yellow potatoes in the back of the truck that hide his victim.)

Hitchcock's emphasis on "Bob Rusk, Techniclor psycho" also sounds in the man's apparel:

Two stylish striped suits -- one brown, one blue.

A tan leather sportcoat -- a bit odd for business, rather a psycho's flamboyant jacket -- for his murder of Brenda. Brenda ends up with a tan Tartan patterned tie round her neck as Rusk's calling card.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And...when Rusk suddenly appears behind his next victim -- Barmaid Babs Milligan - and intones his terrifying invitation("Got a place to stay?") Hitchcock goes all out: Rusk wears his blue suit, but with a bright pink-purple shirt and a bright purple tie..
Hitchcock seems to be saying: "OK, you know that Rusk is the Necktie Strangler now, let's emphasis that necktie every step of the way in bright colors." Rusk's purple shirt and tie contrast nicely with Babs bright orange suitdress. As someone noted, Rusk and Babs here rather seem to be wearing the colors of FRUIT -- purple grapes and a bright orange -- in accord with Rusk's greengrocer's trade.

Rusk's bright red-blond hair plays a key role in the film's climax. Wrong Man and Prison Escapee Richard Blaney(Jon Finch, as equally unknown as Barry Foster) creeps up on the sleeping Rusk in bed in his one room flat and we notice that big thatch of red-blond hair as the ONLY thing we can see under the covers.

(The travelling POV on Rusk's hair in the bed matches quite clearly , I think -- with the travelling POV towards Mrs. Bates in the fruit cellar in Psycho -- in both cases Hitchcock is asking us to focus on a hair of head that seems more like a wig -- somewhat false, definitely disturbing.)

Blaney brings a tire iron down hard on the head of the sleeping Rusk -- but this isn't Rusk. Its a woman. And she isn't sleeping. She's nude and dead already (Blaney is not liable for murder) and HER hair is red-blond.

Soon a pursuing cop(Alec McCowen as Inspector Oxford) rushes through the door to Rusk's flat and Blaney seems caught for ANOTHER murder. But shortly thereafter, Rusk enters -- with no tie, open collar but still a colorful purple shirt -- and is caught red handed by Oxford: "Mr. Rusk, you're not wearing your tie." Curtain.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Frenzy was a fine comeback film for Hitch in 1972, with a focus on the mix of a wrong man plot with a psycho killer plot --but I daresay the qualities WITHIN it are noteable too-- the "Return of the Prodigal Son" to London, the spectacular Covent Garden setting(in which the worker bee men pushing carts full of fruit and vegetable sacks become PART of the story and all its twists.) The cheery and friendly nature of the psycho killer.

But...if not above all...the fact that THIS psycho is viewed in Technicolor(or whatever color process Frenzy used.) The red-blond hair, the purple tie and shirt, the blue and brown suits...the weird leather jacket with the tan Tartain tie -- Hitchcock made sure that Barry Foster as Bob Rusk was a very COLORFUL villain.

PS. The other psychos in HItchocck aren't psycho enough - - or seen enough -- to quite beat my "once a decade theory." These include the real killer in The Lodger (I can't remember: never seen? Barely seen?) the two young gay killers in Rope(THEY would be Hitchcock's first Technicolor psychos, but I can't brand both of them as psychos; maybe just one.) And The Birds -- Psycho Birds.