“More gruesome and graphic than Psycho due to the relaxation of censorship in the 70s, this typically English and at times terrifying story of a sex killer at large, written by Anthony Shaffer, screenwriter of Sleuth and The Wicker Man, deploys Hitchcock’s Wrong Man plot standby one last time. Jon Finch (Polanski’s Macbeth) plays the disaffected bartender and ex-RAF pilot suspected by the police of being the “Necktie Killer” after the murder of his ex-wife. In fact the killer is his cheerful Cockney mate, fruit merchant Bob Rusk, unforgettably played by Barry Foster (after a disgusted Michael Caine turned down the role!). Hitchcock has great, morbid fun with a fine cast of English character actors—Billie Whitelaw, Alec McCowan, Anna Massey, Bernard Cribbins, Jean Marsh, Vivien Merchant, and Michael Bates—and clearly relishes shooting on location in London with Covent Garden, the market where his greengrocer father worked, serving as ground zero for the murders.” -Film at Lincoln Center
