The film stars Jon Finch, Alec McCowen and Barry Foster and features Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Bernard Cribbins and Vivien Merchant.

Broke, Blaney ends up spending the night at a Salvation Army shelter, where he discovers that Brenda has slipped money into his coat pocket.

Back in his room, Rusk discovers that his distinctive jewelled tie pin (with the initial R) is missing, and realises that Babs must have torn it off while he was strangling her.

[11] Barry Foster has said that, in order to prepare for his role, he was asked by Hitchcock to study two books about Neville Heath, an English double murderer who would often pass himself off as an officer in the RAF.

The son of a Covent Garden merchant himself, Hitchcock filmed several key scenes showing the area as the working produce market it was.

According to the 'making-of' feature on the DVD, an elderly man who remembered Hitchcock's father as a dealer in the vegetable market came to visit the set during the filming and was treated to lunch by the director.

[16] The nude scene which shows the first victim being raped and strangled [17] was called by Donald Spoto "one of the most repellent examples of a detailed murder in the history of film".

A second sequence set in the back of a delivery truck full of potatoes increases the suspense, as the murderer Rusk attempts to retrieve his tie pin from the corpse of Babs.

[19] The part of London shown in the film still exists more or less intact, but the fruit and vegetable market no longer operates from that site, having relocated in 1974.

The buildings seen in the film are now occupied by banks and legal offices, restaurants and nightclubs, such as Henrietta Street, where Rusk lived (and Babs met her untimely demise).

Oxford Street, which had the back alley (Dryden Chambers, now demolished) leading to Brenda Blaney's matrimonial agency, is the busiest shopping area in Britain.

In his autobiography, Mancini reports that the discussions between himself and Hitchcock seemed clear, and he thought he understood what was wanted; but he was replaced and flew back home to Hollywood.

He had Goodwin rescore the opening titles in the style of a London travelogue - the director had heard his score for the Peter Sellers sketch Balham, Gateway to the South.

Vincent Canby of the New York Times called it "a passionately entertaining film" with "a marvelously funny script" and a "superb" cast.

[25] Variety also posted a rave review, declaring: "Ingeniously fresh story-telling ideas, stamped with the same mischievous, audacious and often outrageous mixture of humor and suspense that first made him and later sustained him, make the Universal release one of Hitchcock's major achievements.

This is the kind of thriller Hitchcock was making in the 1940s, filled with macabre details, incongruous humor, and the desperation of a man convicted of a crime he didn't commit.

"[27] Penelope Gilliatt of The New Yorker wrote of Hitchcock that "we are nearly back in the days of his great English films", adding "He is lucky to have been able to draw on Anthony Shaffer to do Frenzy's sly screenplay, not to speak of a cast of first-rate, well-equated actors pretty much unknown outside England, so that audiences have no preconceptions about who are the stars and therefore unkillable.

"[28] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "Alfred Hitchcock's best picture in years", with "all the marks of work by a master at his craft and at his most assured".

[29] Time printed a very positive review of the film: "In case there was any doubt, back in the dim days of Marnie and Topaz, Hitchcock is still in fine form.

"[30] In its 2012 review, The Guardian called Frenzy a "complex and gripping thriller" praising the film as "a rich tapestry of suspense, and a masterpiece".

Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film "has a promising opening sequence and a witty curtain line, but the material in between is decidedly pedestrian.

"[32] The Monthly Film Bulletin was unsure what to make of the picture, noting an "old-fashioned air" to it that seemed to suggest that Hitchcock's return to England "signalled a regression to an almost pre-war style of filmmaking".

It concluded: "For all its apparent awkwardness of script and characterisation (Jon Finch especially can make little of Shaffer's anemically written hero) there is enough in Frenzy to suggest that, after the routine critical dismissals, it will repay serious assessment.

The critical consensus reads: "Marking Alfred Hitchcock's return to England and first foray into viscerally explicit carnage, Frenzy finds the master of horror regaining his grip on the audience's pulse -- and making their blood run cold.