Man in the Attic (1954)
A softly-spoken lodger takes a room in a London boarding house just as a killer resembling Jack the Ripper begins murdering women nearby, and his landlady's niece grows increasingly certain that the truth is closer than anyone wants to admit.
The fourth film adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes’s novel The Lodger, Man in the Attic gave Jack Palance a rare opportunity for restrained menace, playing the mystery for slow-burn dread rather than the shock tactics later Ripper films would favor.
Background
Man in the Attic was the fourth film adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes’s novel The Lodger, itself inspired by speculation around the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders in Victorian London. Jack Palance, more often cast in roles built around overt menace, plays a softly-spoken lodger who takes a room in a London boarding house just as a series of murders resembling the Ripper’s begin nearby, with his landlady’s niece growing increasingly suspicious that the truth is closer to home than anyone wants to admit.
What to watch for
Watch for Palance’s unusually restrained performance, which plays the character’s possible guilt through quiet unease and ambiguity rather than overt menace, a notable departure from the more theatrical shock tactics that later Ripper-inspired films would favor. As the fourth film to adapt the same source novel, it offers a useful point of comparison with earlier versions, including Alfred Hitchcock’s own 1927 silent adaptation, in seeing how different filmmakers handled the same basic premise of suspicion falling on an outwardly gentle stranger.
