Jack In The Attic

 

 (imdb)

MAN IN THE ATTIC-1953-The mysterious Mr. Slate (Jack Palance) rents a room from Mr. & Mrs. Harley during the Jack the Ripper murders. Slate fits the description, stays out late and talks strangely. His landlady Helen (Frances Bavier; the future Aunt Bee on TV's “The Andy Griffith Show”) suspects him immediately but husband William (Rhys Williams) thinks everyone is just in a panic. Slate takes a liking to Helen's niece Lily Bonner (Constance Smith), a singer who's “the toast of England”. Inspector Warwick (Byron Palmer) looks for fingerprints. Slate, a kind of a confused mamma's boy, almost does in Lily but relents. He escapes in a horse drawn coach with Warwick in pursuit. Although Slate seems to drown, they don't recover his body. 

This fictional account of the Ripper murders is of course based on fact and also on the two film versions of THE LODGER that came before it. One, a 1927 version directed by Alfred Hitchcock and a 1944 version starring Laird Creger and George Sanders. This low-budget production is really held together by Palance's performance. 

Argentina born director Hugo Fregonese does a good job of keeping the mood but sometimes the plot focuses more on Lily than it does on Slate. Star Palance was in SHANE the same year but lead actress Constance Smith's career never took off. Her time as an actress was marred by bouts of drugs and alcohol, a stabbing, jail time and several attempted suicides. She died in 2003.

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