Man in the Attic (1953)
Economical, moody, funny and suspenseful both, and overall a smart, tight film. If you're like me you'll not be able to stop watching it even though you know it isn't quite a great movie, not at all.
So. Why doesn't it work? Two main reasons, I think. First, the star, Jack Palance, known for being creepy and a little out of control in short bursts, isn't let loose. In fact, his Pennsylvania grittiness is made poorly into a late 19th Century British researcher who has restraint and brooding mystery. It's just a bad fit, and Palance, always most brilliant as a character actor, doesn't fill up the part at all, try as everyone might.
Which makes me want to emphasize that the rest of the cast is very good or even terrific. The older couple is hilarious and believable, and quite facile with little jokes and jabs. The charming daughter is surprisingly charming despite her thin role (it's a bit caricatured). And the reset of the cast, coming and going, does a solid job.
The second reason the movie wobbles is just the plot, the Jack the Ripper kind of tale that ends up as simple as it seems, even though you are thinking all the while, no way, that's too obvious. Well, I don't want to give any more away, but you'll see.
If you have the choice, see the really terrific earlier version, "The Lodger," with George Sanders and Laird Cregar. That one needs no apologies. Nor, exactly, does the "first" of these (there is no first with such an iconic idea of a killer living in your house) by Hitichcock, also called "The Lodger," which adds the huge Hitchcockian twist that the wrong man is arrested as The Ripper and this man, as usual, has to prove his innocence on the run. See that one, though it's a silent film and many of the common prints out there are poor.
As I started to say, though, I think if you start this you'll finish it. It's really fast, it has great almost archetypical foggy London night scenes, and it has lots of banter that you have to be paying attention to or you'll miss the wit. There are some dismissible choreographed upper crust dance hall scenes (that sounds like an oxymoron, but the dancing is pure chorus line junk and it's occurring in a upscale theater as if a serious London revue). And there is Palance, draining every scene he's in.
Economical, moody, funny and suspenseful both, and overall a smart, tight film. If you're like me you'll not be able to stop watching it even though you know it isn't quite a great movie, not at all.
So. Why doesn't it work? Two main reasons, I think. First, the star, Jack Palance, known for being creepy and a little out of control in short bursts, isn't let loose. In fact, his Pennsylvania grittiness is made poorly into a late 19th Century British researcher who has restraint and brooding mystery. It's just a bad fit, and Palance, always most brilliant as a character actor, doesn't fill up the part at all, try as everyone might.
Which makes me want to emphasize that the rest of the cast is very good or even terrific. The older couple is hilarious and believable, and quite facile with little jokes and jabs. The charming daughter is surprisingly charming despite her thin role (it's a bit caricatured). And the reset of the cast, coming and going, does a solid job.
The second reason the movie wobbles is just the plot, the Jack the Ripper kind of tale that ends up as simple as it seems, even though you are thinking all the while, no way, that's too obvious. Well, I don't want to give any more away, but you'll see.
If you have the choice, see the really terrific earlier version, "The Lodger," with George Sanders and Laird Cregar. That one needs no apologies. Nor, exactly, does the "first" of these (there is no first with such an iconic idea of a killer living in your house) by Hitichcock, also called "The Lodger," which adds the huge Hitchcockian twist that the wrong man is arrested as The Ripper and this man, as usual, has to prove his innocence on the run. See that one, though it's a silent film and many of the common prints out there are poor.
As I started to say, though, I think if you start this you'll finish it. It's really fast, it has great almost archetypical foggy London night scenes, and it has lots of banter that you have to be paying attention to or you'll miss the wit. There are some dismissible choreographed upper crust dance hall scenes (that sounds like an oxymoron, but the dancing is pure chorus line junk and it's occurring in a upscale theater as if a serious London revue). And there is Palance, draining every scene he's in.