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),
Frenzy with its cross motif. Cast notes After a pair of unsuccessful films depicting political intrigue and espionage, Hitchcock returned to the murder genre with this film. The narrative makes use of the familiar Hitchcock theme of an innocent man overwhelmed by circumstantial evidence and wrongly assumed to be guilty. Some critics consider "Frenzy" the last great Hitchcock film and a return to form after his two previous works, "Topaz" and "Torn Curtain". Hitchcock announced the project in March 1968. Hitchcock approached Vladimir Nabokov to write the script, but the author turned him down because he was busy on a book.