Steineded How sad is this?

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Myriam Nys A once prosperous couple has run into financial difficulties and is forced to take in a lodger. At first the lodger seems a perfect gentleman - he is polite, he pays generously, he wears sober and respectable clothes - but after a while his nocturnal wanderings and weird little habits begin to arouse suspicion. And what about his strange aversion to Kitty, the kind-hearted niece ? Could the man be the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing ?Pretty entertaining and suspenseful movie, part mystery, part melodrama. The black-and-white cinematography is superb, creating a delightful play of clair/obscur effects. Even the fog filling the streets is admirable. There is also a rich vein of imagery and allegory here. You get Victorian-era light and lighting in all its forms : as a symbol of conspicious consumption, a symbol of law-abiding order and civic progress, and so on. Light can even be dangerous, as shown in the music-hall number where Kitty and her show girls dance close to a semi-cercle of dangerously vicious lamps. The movie tells you that these beautiful moths are dancing too close to the fire, from a moral viewpoint, but it also reminds you of the fact that the lighting used in dance-halls and theaters caused many an accident and many a disaster. (Unless I'm very much mistaken, some of the great theater and music-hall fires of the nineteenth and twentieth century still stand as the worst fire-related catastrophes ever recorded.) The movie is wonderfully evocative and atmospheric in other ways, too. Its mist-shrouded London is an endlessly fascinating place, combining extremes of poverty and luxury and pulsing with life, danger and discovery. Warmly recommended.

preppy-3 This is a fictional tale of Jack the Ripper. It takes place in London in 1888. Jack the Ripper (Laird Cregar) is hiding out under the name Mr. Slade. He kills actresses only. He's renting two rooms from an elderly couple. Then he meets their young niece Kitty (Merle Oberon) who happens to be a dance hall girl. Will he kill her or can he be stopped? VERY atmospheric with excellent direction by John Brahm. He makes great use of light and darkness and shoots this almost like a film noir. It looks great even though it was made on a low budget. The acting is great. Cregar is tall, imposing and menacing as the Ripper...but you also feel sorry for him. Oberon is excellent as Kitty. It's short (84 minutes) and well-done. Only one complaint (and it's minor)--You know Cregar is the Ripper from the very beginning so it robs any sense of mystery the story might have had. Still it's well worth seeing.

bkoganbing Circumstances have forced the Bunting family to take in The Lodger at the same time in 1888 that the notorious Jack The Ripper was terrorizing all of London, particularly in the Whitechapel District where the Buntings reside. It should have made them think twice about taking in a boarder who is a complete stranger.Speculation about the Ripper murders has had professional and amateur criminologists going for years. There is no definitive work on Jack The Ripper because his identity is officially unknown. The Lodger is a work of novelist Maria Belloc Lowndes and her speculation is as good as anyone's including mine.What she did do and what 20th Century Fox did as well is give a great role to Laird Cregar, sad to say his next to last. Cregar is a mysterious medical student whose nocturnal wanderings have everyone wondering. Who's wondering most of all is Scotland Yard Inspector George Sanders.The Buntings, Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood, think nothing of him at first, but his attentions to their actress daughter Merle Oberon are creeping them out. Not to mention the unease that she is slowly feeling around Cregar.Director John Brahm got some great performances out of his cast and really caught the mood of Victorian London. But Cregar will arouse all kinds of conflicting emotions in you. You will hate, loath, and pity him all at once, not an easy thing for an actor to maintain, but Cregar pulls it off. The Lodger is a remake of a film young Alfred Hitchcock did as a silent. They're both good, but I give the edge to this one.

revere-7 This is a great thriller that not enough people have heard of, let alone seen, which is a shame, because it is perhaps the most archetypal black and white Jack-the-Ripper film. The plot is simple but effective - during the Jack-the-Ripper scare, a strange gentleman with a mysterious past rents a room in a London boarding house, to the growing suspicion of the other residents.This mid forties version of the novel "The Lodger" is the best movie version ever made - which is high praise when you consider that it's been adapted to the screen almost every decade from the silent era to today (a version was just released in 2009 the year of this review), including one by the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock himself. Not to mention it's influence on police procedurals (there's a scene at Scotland Yard's Black Museum) and later Ripper films such as "From Hell".But what makes this version special is that it features strong performances by Laird Cregar as the creepy Mr. Slade, and Merle Oberon as a can-can dancer who comes and goes through the East End at night, just the sort of girl who might fall prey to someone like The Ripper.Furthermore, this film came out when the film noir style was in full swing, and cinematographers were experimenting with new camera angles and especially the use of low key lighting. Whether or not it can be classified as a bona fide noir or not, it certain shows noir influences, with figures frequently silhouetted in the London fog, and a distinct similarity to the "menaced woman" noir sub-genre typified by films such as "Sorry, Wrong Number".