Il pensionante

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.

"The Lodger" is not a history lesson and is based very, very loosely on Jack the Ripper. I say this because as a retired history teacher, I've noticed that a lot of folks think many film characters are real...and Mr. Slade and his odd proclivities are based on some real events as well as a lot of fiction.

When the film begins, London is all in a panic due to the murders by Jack the Ripper. During all this hubbub, the ever-odd Mr. Slade (Laird Cregar) arrives at the home of two folks (Sara Allgood and Cederic Hardwicke). He wants to rent a room and seems like a pretty normal guy...initially. However, through the course of the film, you see more and more of the weird and peculiar aspects of Slade and folks start to add up all the weird details and think he might just be that serial killer.

This film works pretty well because it sets an excellent creepy mood and Laird Cregar really was terrific as the creepy lodger. Too bad he died so young, as he sure had a great screen presence! Worth seeing.

Though heavy hints suggest the "Jack the Ripper" murders, this name is deemphasised in the film. Here the killer is known mainly as "The Ripper" and possibly for censorship reasons his victims are identified in dialogue as "actresses" and "showgirls" but never "prostitutes".

Many of the victims are downtrodden cockney women who may once have danced or acted on stage but are now reduced to street busking and begging to support their rowdy drinking sessions in cosy East End pubs. Save for their career designation as given in the dialogue, the film is clearly suggesting prostitutes as victims, and the killer is shown to find showgirls immoral. (It is also important to note the great pains made by the script to show the victims as kind and generous and in no way deserving of their fate.)

In any event this is a well-made film with excellent black and white photography, good camera work and some interesting images. The film is foremost entertainment, it is not a detailed documentary of the "Jack the Ripper" crimes, nor is it a mystery. Only a rudimentary exploration of the killer's psyche is made, and much screen-time is lavished on showcasing song and dance numbers performed by Merle Oberon in her leading role as a gaily dressed showgirl. Indeed the police investigation takes second-place to the fluffy romance between Oberon's character and a police detective, and the final twist involving the killer's possible left-handedness a rudimentary boy's-own-adventure style plot twist.

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.

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.