The team behind 1944’s The Lodger – stars, writer, producer, director and about 20 other shared crew – returned for this Gothic procedural Noir/Horror/Thriller about a composer in turn-of-the-century London who commits murderous acts during blackouts. In The Lodger, Laird Cregar was a Jack the Ripper type. Here he is less sinister, more nuanced. The first two-thirds are solid but familiar. The final act gets really bizarre and surreal in a good way. There are some wildly stylized sequences, particularly the opening murder and the Guy Fawkes bonfire scene. There’s a fun role for Linda Darnell as the manipulative young woman. (We actually root for Cregar to murder her.) The score by Bernard Herrmann is important to the story.
The Lodger is coming up in less than 100 titles.
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