Man in the Attic ** (1953, Jack Palance, Constance Smith, Byron Palmer, Frances Bavier, Rhys Williams, Sean McClory, Isabel Jewell) – Classic Movie Review 12,346

Director Hugo Fregonese’s 1953 thriller mystery film Man in the Attic stars Jack Palance, who is well cast and relishes his meaty role as a Jack the Ripper-style serial killer suspect in this retread of Marie Belloc Lowndes’s much filmed most famous novel The Lodger (published 1913), about a mysterious boarder in a London lodging house in the 1880s.

Palance is quite subtle and complex as Mr Slade, a research pathologist staying with the increasingly suspicious room-keeper Mrs Helen Harley (Frances Bavier), whose husband William (Rhys Williams) is blissfully unaware of all his wife’s doubts and fears.

In London, on the third night of the Jack the Ripper killings 1888, research pathologist Mr Slade arrives late at the Harley home to rent a room and an attic, supposedly for his research work. Slade acts strangely, says he is out late at night working and never explains his research.

When Palance is off screen, the tempo winds down to an alarming degree, stalled with wan performances from Constance Smith as the room-keeper’s stage-star niece Lily Bonner, and from Byron Palmer as the inspector, Inspector Paul Warwick.

Low production values and tepid, schlocky direction add to the feeling of wearily going through the chiller motions. But the sleazy, fog-bound atmosphere of London working-class street-life is beautifully conjured up and Palance is compelling.

Constance Smith and Jack Palance in Man in the Attic.

The cast include Jack Palance, Constance Smith, Byron Palmer, Frances Bavier, Rhys Williams, Sean McClory, Isabel Jewell, Leslie Bradley, Tita Phillips, Lester Matthews, Harry Cording, Lilian Bond, Lisa Daniels, Stuart Holmes, and Jeffrey Sayre.

The screenplay by Robert Presnell Jr and Barré Lyndon is based on The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, which fictionalises the Jack the Ripper killings.

It was released in the US on 23 December 1953 by 20th Century Fox.

Four works of Marie Belloc Lowndes are adapted for the screen: The Chink in the Armour (published 1912; adapted for the screen 1922), The Lodger (1913; adapted several times), Letty Lynton (1931; adapted in 1932 as Letty Lynton starring Joan Crawford), and The Story of Ivy (1927; adapted into the 1947 film Ivy starring Joan Fontaine).

Her most famous novel, The Lodger (published 1913), is based on the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.

The Lodger was filmed in 1927 by Alfred Hitchcock as The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, and it was adapted again in 1932 as The Lodger, and in 1944 as The Lodger, and again as Man in the Attic (1953). It was filmed yet again as The Lodger in 2009, directed by David Ondaatje and starring Alfred Molina, Hope Davis and Simon Baker.

The cast are Jack Palance as Mr Slade, Constance Smith as Lily Bonner, Byron Palmer as Inspector Paul Warwick, Frances Bavier as Mrs Helen Harley, Rhys Williams as William Harley, Sean McClory as Constable No. 1, Leslie Bradley as Constable No. 2, Tita Phillips as Daisy, Lester Matthews as Chief Inspector Melville, Harry Cording as Detective Sergeant Bates, Lisa Daniels as Mary Lenihan, Lilian Bond as Annie Rowley, Isabel Jewell as Katy, Noble Chissell as Theatre Patron, Stuart Holmes, and Jeffrey Sayre.

Attic movies

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,346

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