Do you think that it is easy to kill a person? Your limited knowledge and experience regarding this will have its source on the cheap crime thrillers that we some times call “penny dreadful”, or from the exaggerated and romantic gangster movies, I guess. You might have seen people falling stone dead after he is shot, or some times, going on talking melodramatic utterances laying his head on the lap of his dear ones, and bidding farewells for time that seems endless. That may not be the case in real life, you see. You must not blame the movies for that. Movies are meant to show some thing larger than life. Never mind it. Infact, our difficulty in killing a person is directly proportional to the victim’s lust for life at the time he is being killed. There is chance that a person who has decided to commit suicide may die even by a minor fever.
Mr. Hitchcock has always related in interviews that his films were not true to life. And he doesn’t want it to be. However, there are instances where he portrayed life situations realistically. Let me call your attention towards a movie directed by Mr. Hitchcock, called Torn Curtain (1966), starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews. The movie is regarded as one of the worst Hitchcock films, but today it is best remembered for a spectacular murder scene! It was said that Hitchcock wanted to show the audience how difficult it is to kill a person. During the Second World War Hitchcock was asked to direct some documentaries, which shot the cruelties in the German concentration camps. Probably, Hitchcock remembered that while he shot Torn Curtain’s murder scene.
In the film Paul Newman plays the role of an American nuclear scientist, visiting Germany as a spy nosing after a secret formula. A German bodyguard named Gromek becomes suspicious of Newman and follows him. Gromek at last catches Newman in an eerie farmhouse, and he is threatened to be exposed. There remained no other way for Newman other than killing Gromek with the help of the farmwoman. What follows is a disgustingly realistic murder scene, where Gromek is first attacked with a pot full of hot cooked food thrown on to his head. When Newman tries hard to strangle him, the woman stabs him with the kitchen knife in his neck. He is then hit with a shovel on his knees and finally dragged towards the mouth of an oven where he is gassed to death. Gromek is a well-built man who is not ready to die so easily, and Newman and his accomplice is exhausted by the task. Essentially it should be called “Hitchcockian “, indeed. And I advocate you to get hold of the movie and watch it
By the way one of the easiest way of killing is by strangling with a string. Do you know why? The victim will be exhausted very soon and won’t be able to defend himself for a long time. However, make sure that you have a strong pair of hands. If you are a clever man you will use your necktie for strangling, and please remember to iron the tie well before wearing it next time, or it will betray you before an expert sleuth. Wow! Today’s time up. Think it over. Help yourself for a delicious nightmare!. See you next time.
