The Lodger (1944)

A landlady suspects her new lodger is Jack the Ripper.

Director:

John Brahm

Writers:

Barré Lyndon (screenplay), Marie Belloc Lowndes (from the novel by)

Stars:

Merle Oberon, George Sanders, Laird Cregar

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Merle Oberon	...	Kitty Langley
George Sanders	...	Inspector John Warwick
Laird Cregar	...	Mr. Slade
Cedric Hardwicke	...	Robert Bonting (as Sir Cedric Hardwicke)
Sara Allgood	...	Ellen Bonting
Aubrey Mather	...	Superintendent Sutherland
Queenie Leonard	...	Daisy - the Maid
Doris Lloyd	...	Jennie
David Clyde	...	Sergeant Bates
Helena Pickard	...	Annie Rowley

Storyline

In late Victorian London, Jack the Ripper has been killing and maiming actresses in the night. The Burtons are forced to take in a lodger due to financial hardship. He seems like a nice young man, but Mrs. Burton suspects him of being the ripper because of some mysterious and suspicious habits, and fears for her beautiful actress niece who lives with them.

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Plot Keywords:

attic | jack the ripper | lodger | music hall | painting | 

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Taglines:

PROBING EYES that marked the woman he loved for death!

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Genres:

Crime | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

19 January 1944 (USA)

Also Known As:

Scotland Yard greift ein

Filming Locations:

Stage 2, 20th Century Fox Studios - 10201 Pico Blvd., Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Technical Specs

Runtime:

84 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Laird Cregar's screen presence and performance created such a sensation that Twentieth Century Fox planned to cash in on their find by putting him in similar roles in other productions. The first of these was Hangover Square which re-united director John Brahm, screenwriter Barre Lyndon and co-star George Sanders. The plans were cut short when Laird Cregar was stricken by a fatal heart attack at the end of the year. "Hangover Square" would be released after his death.

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Goofs

In the scene at the Black Museum, Inspector Warwick mentions the "four murders" but by this point in the film there have been five.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Old Cockney Man: [reading poster] "Murders being committed in our midst. Police inadequate. We intend offering a substantial reward to anyone, citizen or otherwise, who shall give information bringing the murderer or murderers to justice." Hmm.

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Connections

Featured in Concerto Macabre: The Films of John Brahm (2007)

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Soundtracks

"The Parisian Trot"
(uncredited)
Music by Lionel Newman
Lyrics by Charles Henderson
Sung by Merle Oberon (probably dubbed) and danced by her and chorus girls at a theater

User Reviews

Mrs. Lowndes' evergreen tale of the Ripper finds a memorable exemplar in Laird Cregar

It's London's autumn of terror – 1888 – when Jack the Ripper stalked the slums of Whitechapel to eviscerate gin-soaked prostitutes and shake the capital of the British Empire to its foundations. John Brahm's movie opens on the gas-lit and fog-wreathed cobblestones, evocatively shot by Lucien Ballard, in this umpteenth recension of Marie Belloc Lowndes' evergreen chiller The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock did a silent treatment in 1927, and Jack Palance would star in Man in the Attic in 1954 , to name but two of its closest cousins).

The crafty Mrs. Lowndes may have been the first to use that surefire scare tactic `the call is coming from inside the house!' The gimmick of her story is that the fiend has a respectable face and may have taken lodgings under a respectable roof while its respectable occupants remain oblivious but imperiled.

Brahm's choice of lodger is Laird Cregar, whose enormous bulk – he was six-three and 300 pounds – made him look perpetually 45, though he was only 28 when he died, shortly after making this movie. (His last, released posthumously the following year, was the somewhat similar Hangover Square, which Brahm also directed). The rooms he takes (including an attic `laboratory' complete with gas fire for his experiments) belong to Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood, whose niece Merle Oberon, a music-hall star, lives there as well.

When Laird is invited to attend one of Oberon's can-can numbers, he rants and raves about painted and powdered woman and finally erupts: `I can show you something more beautiful than a beautiful woman,' whereupon he produces a photograph of his dead brother, who came to ruin through consorting with wicked women (there's the merest insinuation of syphilitic insanity). Clearly, the lodger has unresolved issues.

The Ripper legend and Lowndes' telling of it are so familiar it needs no retracing, save to note that George Sanders plays the smitten Scotland Yard Detective and that Brahm delivers all the expected chills. But then this German emigrant always fared better with the spooky and the Victorian than with the hard-boiled and American. The Lodger counts among his finer hours-and-a-half.