One of my all time favorites.

Great Film overall

Don't Believe the Hype

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

1st watched 6/26/2014 -- 5 out of 10(Dir-Hugo Fregonese): Interesting but calculated mystery revolving around the British "Jack the Ripper" legend. This movie version of the story involves a mysterious pathologist played by a young Jack Palance who is setup early on as a possible suspect in the ripper's murders. This is not necessarily done thru the screenplay but rather by the way the movie is directed. From the first scene, the Ripper is the focus as two policeman escort home a drunk older lady only to see her murdered. Palance's character then arrives on the scene looking for a room with an attic to perform his experiments -- supposedly. Palance has the ability to be charming yet sometimes scary and menacing and shows his screen presence in this early film. Palance is not the problem with this movie -- the problem is that it sets his character up too early and rides him as a mysterious unknown with Frances Baviar(from Andy Griffith's TV show) as the landlord exclaiming her belief in his guilt early on. It's fun to see Aunt Bee before she became this TV show character, but other than this oddity the movie doesn't provide much mystery or allure. The cast is fine and there isn't any over-acting it's just not a good screenplay. I guess if you want to see these TV stars in earlier roles it's not a wasted viewing but other than that it doesn't offer much. It's kind of alarming that a man that actually did a lot of real killing to women in England has gotten so much attention and movie credo's but I guess that's just the way of our world....the movie doesn't help us understand anything different about this character and doesn't make for a worthwhile experience unfortunately.

The third remake of the 1927 Hitchcock silent classic "The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog" introduces hardly anything new. It's almost a shot-by-shot remake of the previous version from 1944 called The Lodger. Most of the dialog is the same, and the characters as well.What this film does is it polishes the previous remake to make it a touch better, and it makes it seem slightly more logical. To me, Jack Palance does a better job as the lodger, not just acting wise, but also his charisma seem to fit the character more.Among the changes there is an added dog to the family, small bits and pieces were changed and the ending was made more plausible. I gave it 6 out of 10, similarly to the 1944 film, because although I do think this one is better, it's not original enough to receive more.

I recently saw an old movie from 1953 called "Man In The Attic." It stars Constance Smith a young Jack Palance. No spoilers below. Evaluations only. The setting is London of the past, where a scientist (Palance) who boards at a family's home is suspected of being the infamous Jack the Ripper. Cons: Much of the acting was wooden, some of the stage-show scenes were downright ridiculous or at least out of place, and the accents were truly awful (especially seeing Frances Bavier--Aunt Bee from Andy Griffith--try and do an English accent! Very funny as she tries at it all the way through-- the way she tries to say "bag" as a Brit, and just sounds like she's from Alabama: "bayyg" "bayyg"). Pros: I liked how all the confusion made it frustratingly impossible to determine if the 'evidence' was saying it was or was not Palance, and they did that on purpose. Is he deeply troubled because of his childhood experiences, or is he actually the madman Jack the Ripper? So hard to tell during the film, and that's the hook! Almost Hitchcockian in that way. So, obviously I thought the story line was good, and the progression-to-arc was very textbook. You can tell this would make an excellent book----which it had, actually. It had been adapted from a book called The Lodger by a lady called Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes (I never heard of her before). The movie ended somewhat too abruptly, and without so much as a post-climax wrap-up or epilogue (said epilogues seeming to be more or less a post-modern convention and conspicuously 'absent' from the older films), but one assumes that the novel holds the appropriate denouement. Overall it exceeded my expectations; it was a worthy rental, a brief movie at that, and so I recommend it to you.

***SPOILERS*** Third remake of the 1912 novel about the notorious Jack the Ripper who terrorized the Whitechaple/Kensington districts of London in the late 1880's.In this updated version were, like in the previous two, kept in the dark to just who the Ripper really is. Even though it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to spot his identity within the first few minutes of the movie! Thats even before he,in his secret identity, even comes on the scene!Looking for a place to stay Slade, Jack Palance, finds his home away from home, the local city morgue, at the Harley house. Having the use of the attic Slade can conduct his secret experiments without anybody bothering or spying on him.While Slade, who works night at the morgue, is doing his day-work in the attic for what he explains to the Harleys is the benefit of future generations, in the field of pathology, the mysterious Jack the Ripper is out murdering young women in the neighborhood. It doesn't take long for Slad's landlady Mrs. Helen Harley, Frances Bavier, to suspect him of being the Ripper. It's Helen's husband Willliam, Rhys Williams, who's always making excuses for Slade in his secretive and suspicious behavior that has Slade from either being thrown out of the Harley home or even being reported to the police as a suspect in the Ripper murders!The most unusual and at the same time naive character in this whole scenario is the Harley's niece the beautiful showgirl girl Lilly Bonner, Constance Smith. Lily who despite Slade's weird and even threatening behavior in her presents is somehow in love with the neurotic mortician. Not really knowing if Slade is the Ripper or not his very actions should have warned Lily to stay at least at arms, or knifes, length away from the nut-case! But being both fascinated and in love with the eye popping and what seems like religiously fanatical wacko Lily instead takes him into both her confidence as well as her dressing room! That's as she's undressing, in prudish and Victorian England no less, right in front of the sweating and goggling mental case.Jack Palance is at his sinister best as the mysterious Slade the Lodger who lifts the movie a few notches above what it would have been without him being in it. Having a good idea of who the Ripper is I was far more interested, as well as entertained, by Plalance's over the top performance then anything else, in having to do with the movie's plot, in the film.***SPOILER ALERT*** The ending is much like the 1944 movie version-"The Lodger" with Laird Creger-with the Ripper disappearing into the night, or the Thames River, never to be seen or heard from again! That's until Hollywood, or a foreign or independent film studio, decide to make a new and updated movie version of Jack the Ripper and his criminal adventures.