MOVIEmeter
SEE RANK
Up 743 this week

The Lodger (1927)
"The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog" (original title)

7.3
Your rating:
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -/10 X  
Ratings: 7.3/10 from 4,316 users  
Reviews: 67 user | 64 critic

A landlady suspects her new lodger is the madman killing women in London.

Director:

Writers:

(from the novel by), (scenario), 2 more credits »
0Check in
0Share...

User Lists

Related lists from IMDb users

a list of 203 titles created 03 Sep 2011
 
a list of 3595 titles created 1 month ago
 
a list of 263 titles created 3 months ago
 
a list of 2916 titles created 16 May 2011
 
a list of 514 titles created 09 Dec 2011
 

Connect with IMDb


Share this Rating

Title: The Lodger (1927)

The Lodger (1927) on IMDb 7.3/10

Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

Take The Quiz!

Test your knowledge of The Lodger.

Videos

Photos

Learn more

People who liked this also liked... 

Crime | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.5/10 X  

A happily married London barrister falls in love with the accused poisoner he is defending.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Gregory Peck, Ann Todd, Charles Laughton
Blackmail (1929)
Crime | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7/10 X  

Alice White is the daughter of a shopkeeper in 1920's London. Her boyfriend, Frank Webber is a Scotland Yard detective who seems more interested in police work than in her. Frank takes ... See full summary »

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Anny Ondra, Sara Allgood, Charles Paton
Crime | Mystery | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7/10 X  

Man on the run from a murder charge enlists a beautiful stranger who must put herself at risk for his cause.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Nova Pilbeam, Derrick De Marney, Percy Marmont
Frenzy (1972)
Crime | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.5/10 X  

A serial killer is murdering London women with a necktie. The police have a suspect... but he's the wrong man.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Jon Finch, Alec McCowen, Barry Foster
Peeping Tom (1960)
Horror | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.7/10 X  

A young man murders women, using a movie camera to film their dying expressions of terror.

Director: Michael Powell
Stars: Karlheinz Böhm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey
The Black Cat (1934)
Horror | Crime | Adventure
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.1/10 X  

American honeymooners in Hungary are trapped in the home of a Satan- worshiping priest when the bride is taken there for medical help following a road accident.

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners
M (1931)
Crime | Drama | Film-Noir
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.5/10 X  

When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.

Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut
The Penalty (1920)
Certificate: Passed Crime | Drama | Horror
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.4/10 X  

A deformed criminal mastermind plans to loot the city of San Francisco as well as revenge himself on the doctor who mistakenly amputated his legs.

Director: Wallace Worsley
Stars: Charles Clary, Doris Pawn, Jim Mason
Horror
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8/10 X  

Dr. Caligari's somnambulist, Cesare, and his deadly predictions.

Director: Robert Wiene
Stars: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher
Deep Red (1975)
Horror | Mystery | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.6/10 X  

A musician witnesses the murder of a famous psychic, and then teams up with a fiesty reporter to find the killer while evading attempts on their lives by the unseen killer bent on keeping a dark secret buried.

Director: Dario Argento
Stars: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia
Crime | Drama | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.7/10 X  

A young FBI cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims.

Director: Jonathan Demme
Stars: Jodie Foster, Lawrence A. Bonney, Kasi Lemmons
The Exorcist (1973)
Horror | Thriller
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8/10 X  

When a teenage girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two priests to save her daughter.

Director: William Friedkin
Stars: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb
Edit

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Marie Ault ...
Mrs. Bunting - The Landlady
Arthur Chesney ...
Mr. Bunting - Her Husband
June ...
Daisy Bunting - Their Daughter
Malcolm Keen ...
Joe Chandler - a Police Detective
Ivor Novello ...
Edit

Storyline

A serial killer known as "The Avenger" is on the loose in London, murdering blonde women. A mysterious man arrives at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting looking for a room to rent. The Bunting's daughter is a blonde model and is seeing one of the detectives assigned to the case. The detective becomes jealous of the lodger and begins to suspect he may be the avenger. Written by Col Needham <col@imdb.com>

Plot Summary | Add Synopsis

Plot Keywords:

lodger | detective | suspect | killer | rent | See more »


Certificate:

Unrated | See all certifications »

Parents Guide:

 »
Edit

Details

Country:

Language:

Release Date:

14 February 1927 (UK)  »

Also Known As:

The Lodger  »

Filming Locations:


Box Office

Budget:

£12,000 (estimated)
 »

Company Credits

Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

| (National Film Archive print) | (TCM print) | (VHS) | (Ontario) | (2012) (theatrical)

Sound Mix:

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1
See  »
Edit

Did You Know?

Trivia

For the opening scene, where the Avenger's murder victim faces the camera and screams, Alfred Hitchcock filmed the scene by having the actress lie down on a large sheet of glass, with her golden hair spread out around her head. He then lit the actress from underneath the sheet of glass, and filmed her with a camera mounted on its side, with the lens pointed at a downward angle. This gave the appearance that the actress's hair (with its golden curls, so important to the murderer) was ringed in a halo of light. See more »

Goofs

When the lodger is playing a game of chess with Daisy (about 26 minutes into the movie), the chessboard is set up incorrectly. A game of chess is always played with a black square on the far-left and a white square on the far-right of the board as they face it; on this occasion the board is the wrong way around and should be rotated 90 degrees in either direction for it to be correct. See more »

Quotes

[first lines]
Female eyewitness: Tall he was - and his face all wrapped up.
See more »

Connections

Featured in Biography: Jack the Ripper: Phantom of Death (1995) See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

See more (Spoiler Alert!) »

User Reviews

 
"Murder – wet from the press"
9 November 2007 | by (Ruritania) – See all my reviews

The Lodger was the feature which Hitchcock himself described as his first true film (it was actually his third complete one), and film historians, particularly auteurists tend to focus upon it because it is it introduces themes of murder and suspense that Hitch's name would later be synonymous with.

To be honest, the first thing that strikes me upon watching The Lodger is its sense of rhythm. Hitchcock's earliest films were always very rhythmic and the opening moments of The Lodger are a great example, with a dynamic and attention grabbing sequence of shots and title cards. Much of this however may be down to the style of the seldom referenced screenwriter Eliot Stannard, who has a credit on all but one of Hitchcock's silents. Stannard was a master at telling stories in purely visual terms, and his screenplays often go as far as to map out series of interlocking images.

The next very obvious thing about The Lodger is that right from the start Hitchcock was more interested in cinematic technique than he was in performances or artistry. The Lodger is crammed with Expressionist effects, in particular double exposures. Hitch clearly hadn't learnt the art of subtlety yet and these are massively overused. We can also tell early on that Hitchcock was interested in using his camera to involve the audience in the film, throwing in point-of-view shots or drawing our attention to specific items. In this regard his technique was not yet refined. He was develop it in his later silents.

Of course what generally interests followers of Hitchcock's career is the fact that The Lodger is the first time he deals with the grisly subject of murder. It's true that there are many Hitchcockian elements here – murder, blondes, a love triangle and even a MacGuffin in the form of the Avenger whom all the characters are concerned about but isn't the focus of the story. There is a kind of morbid sensationalism concerning the killings, something we'd see right through to the other end of Hitch's career with the comment about "ripped whores" in 1972's Frenzy. There's also of course a "wrong man", although here he appears more as the subject of a whodunit. The later Hitchcock would have focused upon the plight of the wrongly accused, and made a more suspenseful film in the process.

All in all, The Lodger isn't really as significant an early Hitchcock as some would believe. For one thing there is the influence of screenwriter Stannard and the fact that Hitchcock, although he may have relished the material, was still very young and inexperienced. The fact is The Lodger may contain more of Stannard's influence than it does Hitchcock's. It's not as if Hitchcock immediately began making more murder thrillers. The majority of his British thrillers are of the espionage/adventure variety, and it would take up until the early 40s for Hitchcock to really begin making masterpieces in the domestic murder genre. It's also nowhere near being Hitch's best silent film, even though it tends to be remembered over more polished works like The Ring and The Manxman. Taken out of context though, it is a fairly decent late silent thriller, with only a few minor flaws in plot and direction.


11 of 16 people found this review helpful.  Was this review helpful to you?

Message Boards

Recent Posts
Why is no-one interested in this film? u04hmb
Jack the Ripper holloriese
Restored Print On DVD??? ItchyGirl
Would you consider this film noir? Prof_Lostiswitz
remake macgyver375
Specific viewing times? DavidJT
Discuss The Lodger (1927) on the IMDb message boards »

Contribute to This Page

Create a character page for:
?