This is a rather odd thriller.It has a rather unsatisfactory framing device so that it begins and ends in a club.Jimmy Hanley is an old reporter who is asked to recount his experiences as a young cub reporter.It starts with a fire at an asylum where one of the lunatics is thought to have escaped.However for some reason everyone seems to deny this.Hanleys friend lives with her mother in a large house and decide to let out a room.Along comes Valentine Dyall looking very sinister and dressed in black to take the room.For some reason he is allowed to take over the house.He talks in a menacing monotone.The lights are kept dim,the curtains drawn,his room locked and preventing other people from visiting.Eventually he is found dead in his room which is bolted from the inside.The denouement is very unsatisfactorily filmed,partly flashback and partly description.The film seems to use part of Edgar Wallace's "Clue Of The New Pin".It could have been a lot better.
5 Reviews
Spooky Valentine Dyall
boblipton1 April 2020
Jimmy Hanley is the young reporter with suspicions about whether everyone was accounted for in that fire at the madhouse. Valentine Dyall is Dr. Fell, who takes a room in the house of decayed gentry. He proceeds to terrorize everyone with his secretive manner and his threatening, cultured voice.
It's a variation on Marie Belloc Lowndes' THE LODGER. Dyall is the making of it, with a lovely scene in which he chides Constance Smith for turning up the gas lamps, noting that the only reason her mother lets a room to a stranger is because she needs the money. He's smooth and very scary, with his insinuating manner.
The decayed family, by the way, is named 'Musgrave', which recalls the Sherlock Holmes story 'The Musgrave Ritual. It's a nice bit suggesting that there is a mystery here... but what that mystery is will be answered by the end. Perhaps.
It's a variation on Marie Belloc Lowndes' THE LODGER. Dyall is the making of it, with a lovely scene in which he chides Constance Smith for turning up the gas lamps, noting that the only reason her mother lets a room to a stranger is because she needs the money. He's smooth and very scary, with his insinuating manner.
The decayed family, by the way, is named 'Musgrave', which recalls the Sherlock Holmes story 'The Musgrave Ritual. It's a nice bit suggesting that there is a mystery here... but what that mystery is will be answered by the end. Perhaps.
The Lodger in a locked-room mystery
Mbakkel225 October 2015
Warning: Spoilers
This film combines the story of "The Lodger" with the "locked-room mystery".
1904: A young newspaper journalist interviews a dying employee of an insane asylum after a fire has demanded the lives of interns. He says that one of the patients was responsible for the fire, but the head of the asylum dismisses it.
At the same time a strange doctor visits an elderly woman to become her lodger. He acts strange and threatens the woman and her daughter. He dislikes their visitors and put and end to it. He is soon suspected to be Jack the Ripper, back after several year's absence I have watched both "The Lodger" (1944) and "The Man in the Attic" (1952). Laird Cregar and Jack Palance were far better than Valentine Dyall as the lodger. Cregar and Palance managed to display a mixture of insanity and vulnerableness, Dyall is ONLY darkish-clothed and threatening.
A man is found inside a locked-room. I will not tell you who he was. The identity of the killer may come as a surprise to you, but I can reveal that I toyed with the idea myself.
A large portion of the film is told in flashback by an old man, who was the newspaper reporter.
1904: A young newspaper journalist interviews a dying employee of an insane asylum after a fire has demanded the lives of interns. He says that one of the patients was responsible for the fire, but the head of the asylum dismisses it.
At the same time a strange doctor visits an elderly woman to become her lodger. He acts strange and threatens the woman and her daughter. He dislikes their visitors and put and end to it. He is soon suspected to be Jack the Ripper, back after several year's absence I have watched both "The Lodger" (1944) and "The Man in the Attic" (1952). Laird Cregar and Jack Palance were far better than Valentine Dyall as the lodger. Cregar and Palance managed to display a mixture of insanity and vulnerableness, Dyall is ONLY darkish-clothed and threatening.
A man is found inside a locked-room. I will not tell you who he was. The identity of the killer may come as a surprise to you, but I can reveal that I toyed with the idea myself.
A large portion of the film is told in flashback by an old man, who was the newspaper reporter.
Genuinely chilling performance by villain of the piece.
brianj-goodinson11 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Very much of its time but an extremely interesting take on the Jack the Ripper case. Valentine Dyall is incredibly menacing as Dr Fell. Unsettling in the extreme & in my opinion a fantastic performance. Great to see a young Charles Hawtrey in this - one of our National Treasures. Impressive film despite still me parts of the plot being implausible.
So so, thanks to the script
Leofwine_draca22 May 2018
Warning: Spoilers
ROOM TO LET is Hammer's low budget version of the famous LODGER story first made by Hitchcock back in the 1920s. In this tale, a mysterious lodger comes to stay at a boarding house, and questions are raised as to whether he's in fact Jack the Ripper. In Hammer's hands, this is merely an ordinary production that lacks the kind of suspense needed to drive a decent thriller. Valentine Dyall is good value as the baddie of the piece, and Jimmy Hanley makes for a sympathetic lead. But the script is merely so-so, and Dyall's character is more of an annoyance than a menace; you end up wondering why the assorted characters didn't just tell him where to go rather than living in fear of him.
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