| The Lodger | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | John Brahm |
| Screenplay by | Barré Lyndon |
| Based on | the novelThe Lodger 1913 novel byMarie Belloc Lowndes |
| Produced by | Robert Bassler |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Lucien Ballard |
| Edited by | J. Watson Webb Jr. |
| Music by | Hugo Friedhofer |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
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Running time | 84 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $869,300[1][2] |
| Box office | $3 million[1][3] |
The Lodger is a 1944 Americanhorror film aboutJack the Ripper, based on the 1913novel of the same name byMarie Belloc Lowndes. It starsMerle Oberon,George Sanders, andLaird Cregar, featuresSir Cedric Hardwicke, and was directed byJohn Brahm from a screenplay byBarré Lyndon.
Lowndes' story had previously been filmed byAlfred Hitchcock in 1927 as asilent film,The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, and byMaurice Elvey with sound in 1932 asThe Lodger. It was remade again in 1953 byHugo Fregonese asMan in the Attic, starringJack Palance, and again in 2009 byDavid Ondaatje.
Slade, a serial killer, is a lodger in a 19th-century family's London home. So is a singer, Kitty Langley, who definitely has caught Slade's eye. The man of the house, Robert Bonting, is recovering from anervous breakdown caused by business reverses. So the family is initially blind to Slade's increasingly peculiar behavior, such as turning all portraits of women to face the wall and burning odds and ends in the middle of the night.
Women are being brutally killed in theWhitechapel district.Scotland Yard is investigating, and a detective, John Warwick, begins to cast his suspicions in Slade's direction. Kitty, meanwhile, has also developed an attraction to Slade. When Jennie, a former actress who asked Kitty for a handout just before being murdered in her own home is discovered, the investigation increasingly revolves around Kitty's circle of associates.
Slade goes to see Kitty perform at a cabaret. Watching her and her troupe perform a flesh-revealing Can-Can dance brings out his worst instincts. He goes backstage afterward, rants that his brother had taken his own life due to a failed association with an actress; and tries to make her his next victim. But Warwick's men get there just in time. Unwilling to be taken into police custody, Slade flees to the riverbank, and leaps to his death.
The film made a profit of $657,700.[1]
The New York Times gave the film a mixed review: "IfThe Lodger was designed to chill the spine—as indeed it must have been, considering all the mayhem Mr. Cregar is called upon to commit as the mysterious, psychopathic pathologist of the title—then something is wrong with the picture. But, if it was intended as a sly travesty on the melodramatic technique of ponderously piling suspicion upon suspicion (and wrapping the whole in a cloak of brooding photographic effects), thenThe Lodger is eminently successful."[4]Variety wrote: "With a pat cast, keen direction, and tight scripting, 20th-Fox has an absorbing and, at times, spine-tingling drama".[5]TV Guide rated it 4/5 stars, and wrote: "Cregar is absolutely chilling in this Jack the Ripper tale, perhaps the best film made about Bloody Jack."[6]
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