Frenzy filmed in London for the 1956 remake of "The Man Who Knew Too Much"). The last film he had made in Britain before his move to America was "Jamaica Inn" (1939). The film was screened at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, but was not entered into the main competition. Set in the early 1970s, the plot centres on a serial killer terrorizing London by raping and then strangling women with a tie. Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), a Covent Garden wholesale produce merchant, is the murderer. However, circumstantial evidence, partially engineered by Rusk, will implicate Rusk's friend Richard Blaney (Jon Finch),
Themes and plot devices in Hitchcock films associated with violent behavior. In "The Lodger" and "Psycho", this association is the whole basis of the film. Biographers have noted how Hitchcock continued to challenge film censorship throughout his career, until he was allowed to show nudity in "Frenzy". Hitchcock had a dramatic preference for blonde women, stating that the audience would be more suspicious of a brunette. Many of these blondes were of the Grace Kelly variety: perfect, aloof ice goddesses, who also have a hidden red-hot inner fire. In "Vertigo" James Stewart forces a woman to dye her hair blonde. One of Hitchcock's earliest films, "" (1927),