You can witness elements of what will become the director's style, but overall the pace is fairly plodding and the story pretty lame and confusing. One immediately notices the experimentation with the camera, from the hand held shot at the beginning when the actor John Stuart enters the "house for let", to the many candle lit scenes as the characters mount the stairs and explore the house, to the quick cuts used later in the chase to add suspense.Additionally, the comic elements used during moments of tension foreshadow the director's later works. One shot, which he used again in The 39 Steps (1935), occurs when the two men discover the body and their screams are masked by a passing train's whistle. The suspenseful, harrowing chase, though clearly done with miniatures, is also a tried and true characteristic later associated with Hitchcock, to say nothing of the use of trains in his films in general.The story begins with "Stuart" entering an abandoned house, full of cobwebs. He soon meets another man, a rather odd cockney-accented Igor type, who says his name is Ben, and the two of them stumble upon a corpse. Rather oddly, "Stuart" is able to "control" Ben, and there are some really slow moments where not enough tension is built before the next thing happens. Plus, oftentimes what happens next is not enough of a payoff for our wait. There are also some seemly disconnected cutaways, e.g. to doors slamming etc., which show us that the great director was still finding his way in this film.Shortly thereafter, a young woman (Nora) falls through the rotted ceiling and onto the two men. She provides a clue, a telegram from her father which mentions necklace stolen by Sheldrake from a detective named Barton. Soon there is a knock at the door which "Stuart" goes to answer. After inserting a card with Number Seventeen scrawled on it, a man and a woman are revealed behind the door. They want to see the "house for let". As "Stuart" is closing the door, a second man, not connected with the man and woman, also enters.When all of them mount the stairs, "Stuart" tries to slow them so they won't discover the corpse, but Ben informs him that the body has disappeared. This leads the two men and woman, who is identified by one of the men as a deaf-mute (and looks a little like Mary Astor), to take control. They tie up "Stuart" and Nora while Ben hides in another room. Ben is then "strangled" by Sheldrake, the "corpse", who'd been hiding in the room. With far too many cuts back and forth between the prone Ben and Sheldrake, who's not sure Ben is really "out", Sheldrake removes the diamonded necklace from the loo (the director's humor was in tact back then;-) but unbeknownst to him, Ben pilfers it from him before he exits.What follows is a really poorly done fight sequence which allows Sheldrake's gang (the two men & the woman) to leave after tying up "Stuart" and Nora. A chase ensues with perhaps the most suspense the film can manage, though it feels somewhat overlong. A crash, a rescue in water, and a couple of not altogether unexpected twists end the film.

Although I have not seen all of Hitchcock's UK sound films, this has got to be the worst. It opens like Dreyer's VAMPYR (released the same year as this), murky doings in an old house, people coming and going, a dead body disappears, and all in silence. Then characters arrive and interact with each other. However, without any exposition and with the sound recorded so low, one can't make out what is going on or what they are saying. The accents are omnipresent, the speech is fast, there is a cockney fellow, Ben, whose every word is indecipherable. Henry Higgins would have run screaming from the theater.After half an hour of this muddled dialogue and people wandering around encountering each other, we suddenly cut to a chase between two models, one of a bus, the other of a runaway train, for another half hour, until the obligatory crash at a canal barge, a few rescues and the end title. My print ran 1:05:33.This would have fared better as a silent with numerous title cards, explaining either what we just saw and/or what we are about to see. If indeed there was a plot. Or is this a joke, pulled over our eyes by Hitch, just to see what we'd make of it. There is a hallucinatory effect over the whole project, as if we were drugged and trying to make sense out of brain fog.In any case it is a waste of time and along with JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK three years earlier, a true low in the director's oeuvre.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock made many films whether silent or talkies. He wasn't a pioneer in the film world but his techniques and styles have become his trademark. This film captures his aim at touching upon the darkness of humanity but with a sense of humor. This film is set at number 17 house where many people have various reasons for visiting the house. The address has many purposes but living there doesn't see to be one of them. There is an exciting climax with a bus and train. The cast members appear more comfortable on stage than film but they do well in their performances. Until film, most actors worked on stage whether London or New York. The script has problems and is flawed but this film is still worth seeing to note Hitchcock's evolution of a film making genius.

Yes, Hitchcock has seen better days. The parts preceding the train ride creak and the origin of the not-very-good-at-all play comes through all too often. This was the year that saw "Old Dark House" and "Night of the Crossroads. Whale was aiming at humor and succeeded brilliantly and Renoir's film was visually stunning. For that matter "The Bat Whispers" showed Roland West's penchant for odd angles, eye-popping miniature sets plus a wide screen back in 1930, no less! In these films the plots, motives and characters weren't clear at all but who cares? When watching a film like "North By Northwest" I don't remember why things happened, nor do I care at all. "Vertigo" is another example of this. It's the telling that counts. True, there were all the expressionistic shadows and all but Hitchcock DID spend time in Germany during the expressionist binge so this was familiar to him. The train sequence alone makes this quite worthwhile. I'd agree with Francois Truffaut on that one.Curtis Stotlar