Directed by Argentine filmmaker Hugo Fregonese, this adapts Marie Belloc Lowndes’s famous 1913 Jack the Ripper novel, The Lodger. While it treads ground previously walked by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927 and John Brahm in 1944, Fregonese injects enough shadowy noir aesthetic and eerie Victorian tension to make it good. And he wastes no time setting its murky scene. L
ondon, 1888: a fog-drenched metropolis terrorized by a mysterious killer slicing through Whitechapel. Late one night—on the third evening of the slayings—a soft-spoken, intense research pathologist named Mr. Slade (Jack Palance) knocks on the door of William and Helen Harley (Rhys Williams and The Andy Griffith Show’s Frances Bavier, Aunt Bee herself!). Slade wants to rent out their upper room and attic to conduct his vague, late-night research. Helen instantly senses something off—especially after catching him turning portrait faces of actresses to the wall because he feels their eyes on him.
Matters escalate when the Harleys’ glamorous niece, Lily Bonner (Constance Smith), a Paris-trained stage dancer, moves in. While Inspector Paul Warwick (Byron Palmer) courts Lily and tracks down a killer described as wearing an Ulster coat and carrying a black bag, Lily finds herself inexplicably drawn to Slade’s tortured demeanor and dark past, with a mother who was an actress who abandoned her family, fell into prostitution and ended up as the Ripper’s very first victim.
As the body count mounts—including Lily’s showgirl friend Annie (Lilian Bond)—Scotland Yard closes in on Slade’s thumbprints and missing blood-stained coats. Fregonese builds the tension to a boiling climax inside Lily’s theater dressing room, culminating in a breathless midnight chase through London’s cobblestone alleyways and docks.
Fresh off his star-making, villainous turn in Shane, Palance plays Slade with a weird, menacing vulnerability. He doesn’t bother hiding his sinister nature. He projects a violent, simmering misogyny and quiet creepiness that prefigures Norman Bates by nearly a decade. Maybe he could have tried for an accent, but who cares? And spotting Frances Bavier acting terrified in 1880s London years before settling into Mayberry adds a fun piece of trivia for classic TV fans.
You can watch this on YouTube.
