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The Lodger (1944)

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13 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Mania, Murder & Melodrama, 9 June 2001

Author: Ron Oliver (revilorest@juno.com) from Forest Ranch, CA

With all England horrified by the fiendish exploits of Jack the Ripper, a London family slowly becomes concerned by the strange habits of THE LODGER who has rented rooms upstairs...

Atmospheric & creepy, this is one of the great suspense films. Based on the celebrated 1913 horror novel of Marie Belloc Lowndes, the movie memorably captures the panic & paranoia which reigned in London during the Ripper crimes. Using the full palette of shades available to black & white cinematography, the movie creates a chilling, eerie, atmosphere in which one can walk Whitechapel's narrow streets with the murderer.

Laird Cregar mesmerizes in the title role, his great, strange eyes following the viewer like those in the portraits he detests. He is the very picture of obsession & madness. Although lovely Merle Oberon & stalwart George Sanders do very well as the romantic leads, it is Cregar, his tremendous bulk moving silently through the shadows, who will remain in viewers' imaginations.

As the landlords, Sara Allgood & Sir Cedric Hardwicke are exceptional, portraying basically quiet people who come to the alarming conclusion that all is not right in their household. A solid group of character actors - Queenie Leonard, Helena Pickard, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Lumsden Hare - also give vivid performances. Movie mavens will recognize uncredited turns by Billy Bevan as a bartender and, behind the mustache, little Charlie Hall, veteran of many a Laurel & Hardy comedy, as the music hall comedian whose song is interrupted by the Ripper's last attack.

Special mention should be made of British Doris Lloyd (1896-1968), an excellent actress usually seen only in tiny bit roles, often uncredited. Here, unforgettably, she gets to deliver a short, sharp lesson in utter terror as the last of the Ripper's victims. Arriving in Hollywood during the Silent Era, Miss Lloyd would continue to grace small movie moments for decades to come.

Laird Cregar is one of the great What Ifs? of American cinema. Arising out of obscurity, this young actor quickly showed a remarkable talent and was quite soon given featured & starring roles, of which THE LODGER is the most memorable. Alas, his star was to blink out as fast as it rose. Wishing to move into leading & romantic parts, he subjected his 300-pound frame to an extreme crash diet. His body responded with a massive heart attack, killing him only a few months after THE LODGER's release. He was 28 years old.

The film gives a somewhat fictionalized account of the depredations of Jack the Ripper, his identity & the true names of his victims being the most obvious changes. From August 7th to November 10th, 1888, a killer who would become known as Jack the Ripper horrifically butchered seven prostitutes in London's East End, committing acts of such barbaric savagery on the bodies as to be positively bestial. He was never caught, despite a huge public outcry and tremendous efforts from Scotland Yard. In the intervening years there have been numerous suggestive solutions to his identity put forward, some quite fanciful, but no proofs have ever been posited. Jack took his terrible secrets with him to the grave.

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11 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
brilliant atmospheric thriller, 1 March 2003
Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom

From the first few frames, as the title credits wash in and out like the tide, this is a superb film, full of fog, shadows, suspense, and great performances from Cregar (brilliant in this), Oberon, Hardwicke and others. It manages to be chilling and moving at the same time, and the ending seems incredibly sad and poetic after what has gone before. This makes it all the more memorable. Sadly not on video at the moment unless you dig around, but deserves to be better known than perhaps it is. In comparison with the silent version by Hitchcock, this is more deranged and evil than Novello's cuckoo clocks and wild eyes, and also has a more logical conclusion that the viewer was sure of from early on. The strongest scene is the one in Oberon's dressing room quite near the end, which gives the viewer as much of a fright as it gives her. After that it is somehow reminiscent of Phantom of the Opera, not without advantage. Well worth a look.

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Check in for the night., 13 October 2003
Author: Poseidon-3 from Cincinnati, OH

The legendary true story of 19th century London's "Jack the Ripper" has been told countless times in TV and film. Here, the facts are augmented into more of a character study and an observation of the perceptions and suspicions from people when confronted by a person who is decidedly "different". This remake of a silent Hitchcock film focuses on the title character Cregar, an unusual, detached man who takes rooms in an affluent household at the same time that a deranged killer is carving up local "actresses" (1940's censorship disallowed the portrayal of what the victims were in real life -- prostitutes.) One ironic, but unlikely, twist is that once Cregar takes the rooms, it is discovered that a prominent local actress (Oberon) is living in the home as well! Oberon and her aunt Allgood and uncle Hardwicke become increasingly suspicious of the new lodger as he slinks out late at night, burns certain possessions of his and gets sweaty and unnerved at the mere mention of actresses. Is he The Ripper or does he have some similarly-themed problem which will cause him to be thought of as The Ripper even though he isn't? This is basically the thrust of the tale (stunted occasionally by some amusingly awkward musical moments from Oberon and her voice-double.) The fog machine was working overtime during this film and it almost covers up the fact that this was filmed on a backlot. Still, there's enough atmosphere to give the movie some sense of the time and place. Oberon is stunning to behold in a parade of ornate gowns and hairstyles, her unique face lit well by the man she would soon marry and her graceful manner at it's peak. Sanders has little of interest to do as a police inspector who finds time to try to woo her while the body count racks up. As the aunt and uncle, Allgood (especially) and Hardwicke provide delightful, thoroughly solid performances. The most memorable aspect of the film, however, is the startling performance of Cregar and the innovative ways in which he is filmed and lit. (The camera setups, at various times, are leagues ahead of other films being done during this period.) There is an eerie extra light on Cregar when he isn't in silhouette. He gives such a vivid, stark performance (at times literally breathing down the viewers' necks!) that, once seen, he is unlikely to be forgotten. Fortunately, at 84 minutes, the film doesn't overstay its welcome and provides a nice bit of creepy entertainment. Even at this length there are some slightly unnecessary and dull interludes among the townsfolk, but for the most part, the film works. Though the violence is, by now, so tame as to be nonexistent, the menace of the killer is still effective and occasionally very creepy. (Some modern slasher films like 1981's "The Fan" drew obvious inspiration from this one.) Cregar, who died of a heart attack after quickly shedding 100 pounds in order to change his image, is an actor whose screen presence ran circles around many of his contemporaries. That he died so young (he was 28 years old in this film!) and before seeing his full potential realized is one of Hollywood's great losses.

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13 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
That Autumn of Terror, 1888, 13 April 2004
Author: theowinthrop from United States

It began, possibly in April 1888 when a woman named Emma Smith died after being stabbed multiple times - possibly by a gang. Smith may have been a prostitute. But it really got underway in August of that year, when a prostitute named Mary Ann Nichols was killed in the East End of London. She was followed by Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Elizabeth Stride, and finally (and most horribly) Mary Jane Kelly,who was butchered (literally) by the killer in her room in November. After that, although several later killings were sometimes ascribed to the killer, the murders ceased. Nothing in this case has been universally accepted, and every "clue" has been analyzed or reanalyzed again and again. There are a myriad of suggested suspects, including the Duke of Clarence (Queen Victoria's heir and grandson), Dr. Sir William Gull, Montague John Druitt, Michael Ostrog, Aaron Kosminski, four murderers: Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, George Chapman, Frederick Deeming, William Bury, Dr. Tumblety,murder victim James Maybrick, Roylston D'Onston Stevenson, painter Walter Sickert, and (believe it or not) Lewis Carroll (most Ripperologists reject the Carroll theory). One unnamed suspect is known as the "Lodger". The story first occurred as a rumour passed around in the early years of the century (one of those who passed it around is Walter Sickert). The story is that a young man (who was secretive, but sickly) was living in a London boarding house. He only left at night, but would return before daylight. His sole interest was in the newspaper reports of the murders (which occurred only at night). After the murder of Mary Kelly the young man has a collapse in his precarious health, and dies a few months later. From this rumour Marie Belloc Lowndes (sister of Hilliare Belloc and writer of novels based on true crimes) wrote her short story "The Lodger." Later she turned it into a longer novella. This is the story that is the basis for the 1944 film (as well as other versions, such as Hitchcock's 1927 version). This film and it's follow-up are the capoffs for Laird fine, brief career of movie stardom. He had played villains and psychotics in other films (THIS GUN FOR HIRE, I WAKE UP SCREAMING) and demonstrated a versatility seldom shown by some of the popular leading men he supported at the time. He also had done other costume films (he is Sir Henry Morgan, the buccaneer turned royal governor in THE BLACK SWAN, and was the art dealer in Monty Wooley/Gracie Field's HOLY MATRIMONY). His work in comedy and melodrama, modern and costume pieces came together in THE LODGER and HANGOVER SQUARE. In both we know he is the killer, and yet in both we find an odd sympathy for his characters. Perhaps more for George Bone in the latter film (who really is not sure what is going on, but knows it is dreadful), but here there is a sense of loss - the Lodger's brother was destroyed by a prostitute (here called an "actress"), which has led to his crusade of destruction. The supporting cast is fine too, with George Sanders playing the suspicious Scotland Yard inspector who unmasks Cregar (using fingerprinting - which was not used in Great Britain until 1905). Despite the anachronism it is a handsome piece of well made melodrama. One watches it and HANGOVER SQUARE and shakes one's head at the loss the movies had when Cregar died later in 1944.

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Highly atmospheric and creepy Victorian melodrama with psychological overtones..., 11 June 2004
Author: Neil Doyle from U.S.A.

Thanks to Lucien Ballard's atmospheric cinematography of fog-bound Victorian London in the 1880s, THE LODGER emerges as superior melodrama based on Marie Belloc-Lowndes' famous novel. (She's the author of another effective Victorian melodrama that starred Joan Fontaine in the title role as IVY ('47). Mr. Ballard also does a masterful job in photographing MERLE OBERON who never looked more exquisite than she does here in her role as a music hall dancer/singer. (It must be noted that she appears more than a little uneasy in the bawdy musical numbers but performs her acting chores competently).

LAIRD CREGAR gives one of his most menacing performances as the lodger who roams London late at night with what appears to be a black medical kit. The suspense lies in how and where he will be caught and whether or not he will be successful in killing Miss Oberon who inspires his wrath because it is women like her that led to his brother's downfall.

THE LODGER never falters in presenting a compelling fictionalized account of what some believe may be the real story behind the killings that baffled Scotland Yard so many years ago. His bulky image hovers over the film with chilling menace even in scenes where he is not present.

On the other hand, GEORGE SANDERS is wasted in an underwritten role as an inspector determined to find the killer. The wonderful SARAH ALLGOOD is splendid in a good supporting role as the woman who gives the lodger shelter.

Under John Brahm's superb direction, THE LODGER is a film that keeps you in its grip from beginning to end, largely due to Cregar's outstanding performance in the title role and the excellent recreation of Victorian London and its gaslit atmosphere.

Hugo Friedhofer's interesting background score gives added dimension to the proceedings. For another glimpse of LAIRD CREGAR at his best, check out HANGOVER SQUARE, Cregar's last film in 1945 and also directed by John Brahm.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
It's a Goody!, 3 October 2003
Author: Bucs1960 from West Virginia

A tight, terse little black and white film about.....well, about Jack the Ripper. Prostitute victims are transformed into actresses for the film (and obviously for the Code) but it follows somewhat the modus operandi of Jack. You never see the violence, it is only implied and that works for this film.

Laird Cregar is absolutely marvelous as the strange, sweating lodger who may or may not be the murderer. He was perfect for the part, with those great, brooding eyes. Sadly, he died at a very early age.....he could have gone on to greater things. Merle Oberon is lovely, of course, but in the real world she certainly would have not made it on the musical stage....can't sing (obviously dubbed), can't dance,...but that's irrelevant in the scheme of things. George Sanders, that most wonderful gentleman, doesn't get to be too suave in his part as the Scotland Yard inspector, but he is, as he always was, very good. And who could ever fault Sara Allgood, as Oberon's aunt......she never gave a bad performance in her long career.....just marvelous. This film is worth watching and you will agree that Laird Cregar is as good as it gets playing a very edgy man with some big problems!!

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Mrs. Lowndes' evergreen tale of the Ripper finds a memorable exemplar in Laird Cregar, 13 October 2002

Author: bmacv from Western New York

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.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
a great victorian melodrama, 24 December 1999
Author: SkippyDevereaux from Parkersburg, West Virginia

This is a great Victorian melodrama. Everything about this film is superb. The late Laird Cregar is just outstanding in the title role and Merle Oberon has never looked lovelier It's funny how you can see a film when you are about twelve years old and it sticks in your brain because it is so good and this one is one of the best. I highly recommend this film.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
I have never seen such beauty as yours, or such evil in such beauty, 1 October 2005

Author: sol1218 from brooklyn NY

(There Are Spoilers) Fictional dramatization of the notorious 1888 Whitechapel-Kensington murders attributed to the legendary and infamous "Jack the Ripper" that gives the killer a face a name and a motive. After his beloved brother, whom he loved and worshiped, died Slade, Laird Cregar, took it upon himself to rid the world of evil. The evil that Slade targeted was that of beautiful women that he held responsible for his poor brothers demise.

Renting a suite of rooms from the Bartons, Robert and Ellen, (Cedric Harwicke & Sara Allgood) in he Whitechaple section of London Slade planned to continue his "cursade" against evil but something popped up that he never expected. The Barton's beautiful niece singer dancer Kitty Langley, Merle Oberon,who's the star attraction at the Piccadilly Theater lives in the same house. Poor and confused Slade just can't take his eyes off her which leads him to act rather suspicious as he starts to makes weird and dangerous advances towards Kitty.

Both John and especially Ellen notice Slade's strange behavior and suspect of him being "Jack the Ripper" who's been out at night slicing up hookers in the neighborhood. The police are notified about the big lug's unexplained disappearances at night and his constantly burning clothes and other items, that may well have to do with his disappearances, to cover up his suspected actions as the "Ripper". It was too bad that Slade was around Kitty all the time since she got him to blow his cover as the Whitechaple killer by becoming so obsessed with her. In his both loving Kitty and at the same time wanting to murder her that it tipped off the Barton's to just who he really was.

It's obvious right from the beginning of the movie that Slade is the killer so there's no real suspense to who he, Jack the Ripper, is. It's the reasons that drove him, his brother tragic death, to become the insane killer that he is that adds a new and interesting insight to just what state of mind he's in. With the police lead by Inspector John Warwick, George Sanders, setting a trap for him at the theater where Kitty is performing Slade sneaks into her dressing room. After giving Kitty an insight into his strange philosophy of beauty and evil ,as well as life and death, he makes a gab for her only to have Inspector Warwick and a squad of London Bobbies break in and come to her rescue. It takes a lot to put the big gorilla down as he takes off knocking over anybody or anything that gets in his way only to end up diving into the Thames River, to escape the London police, and never to be seen or heard from again.

Laird Cregar is both creepy and charming as Slade and his massive fame, 6 foot 4 inches and 300 pounds,made him that much more scary as the "Ripper" in the movie. Cregar died soon after the movie "The Lodger" was released from a crash diet that not only took some 100 pounds off him but also took his life.

George Sanders as the police inspector Warwick had a small part and did the best he could with it. Both Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood were effective as the landlord and landlady of the house that Slade was staying at and provided the little humor that was in the movie.

It was Merle Oberon as Kitty who just didn't come across at all convincing with her being no naive and unconscious to Slades murderous intentions ,even when he was alone with her. That gave me the impression that she may have thought that she was in a musical instead of a horror/suspense movie.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Rather fun war-time chiller, 27 October 2001
Author: Glenn Andreiev (gandreiev@aol.com) from Huntington, NY

This is the first HOLLYWOOD lensing of the Jack The Ripper tale (Alfred Hitchcock choos ehtis material for his first film thriller in 1926, and there was a rather talky British remake in 1932) The film is a testimony to a great actor, Laird Cregar. He plays a tenant in a rooming house set in the middle of the Ripper murder sites. Cregar gives a wonderful performance, looking trapped when Scotland Yard detective George Sanders (always a treat) is around, or when his landlord's lovely niece (played by the beautiful Merle Oberon) is nearby. The best performance Cregar gives when all is closing in on him. Director John Brahm's camera catches him in close-up, savoring every bead of paniced sweat. Sadly, since Cregar was vastly over weight, only sinister roles came his way. Trying to crash diet, he died of a heart attack at the youthful age of 28. Had he lived, we would seen him become a more famous actors, taking roles probably well into the 1990's.

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