Once again, we have the streets of London taken over by Jack the Ripper (at least his ilk). Women are being murdered on dark foggy nights as the return to their homes or wander the streets. Some are prostitutes; some are just careless citizens. Anyway, the city is on edge and no one dares look past any stranger. Of course, that is assuming the person is a stranger. That said, a man takes a room in a house. His comings and goings are suspicious to the landlords, but they are also in need of the rent. Times aren't the best. The whole plot evolves around the murder of the women and how the man in the house is connected to their whereabouts. This is a very intense, well made film with great suspense.

Mr Slade (Laird Cregar) takes up a temporary residence in the home of Robert Bonting (Cedric Hardwicke). It is Victorian London and Jack The Ripper is murdering his victims. Ellen Bonting (Sara Allgood) suspects that Mr Slade might be the Ripper, while her niece Kitty (Merle Oberon) tries to make it as an actress in the theatre halls. What is Mr Slade's business.....?...The film is set in a smoggy London where Jack The Ripper is at large and it has a claustrophobic atmosphere to it. The cast are good, especially Sara Allgood as the suspicious Ellen. Laid Cregar's character is definitely a misfit - no way would I have agreed to let him share a house with me. Merle Oberon is slightly naive to this complete freak while George Sanders as Inspector Warwick cruises through the film in his usual slick style. The film gets moving from the beginning and Laird Cregar succeeds in making it quite creepy as the Ripper's victims are continually discovered.

Someone's stalking the streets of Whitechapel, wielding a blade against former dancehall girls and leaving their shredded corpses in back alleys. The police are baffled. The citizens are frantic. And Laird Cregar is delicious! I first saw Cregar in I Wake Up Screaming, and I was instantly hooked by his acting abilities. He's sort of a precursor to Vincent Price. And, oddly enough, Price did the radio program version of The Lodger after this film was released. Cregar is not your typical leading man. He's about 6'3 and 300lbs. I haven't been able to find out a lot about him, but I had heard he was a homosexual. This all comes together rather interestingly because the character he plays, Mr. Slade, has a rather strange if somewhat vague sexual attraction to his now deceased brother. Pretty racy stuff for 1944! But, to add to this, one of the main suspects in the real Jack the Ripper killings is Francis Tumblety, who had a well-known hatred for women and I believe was arrested for doing some nasty things with the fellows in or near Whitechapel around the time of the Ripper's nightly jaunts. Curiouser and curiouser! Some liberties had to be taken with the plot, due to the fact that censors didn't want the word "prostitute" flowing off the tongues of the actors. So, Jack has an issue with dancehall girls and actresses(this is 1888, so, not film actresses) and believes they caused the downfall of his brother. Therefore, Jack must hack! Unfortunately, you only get to see his knife at the very end of the movie, but Cregar makes up for it with his tour de force acting and the cinematography is superb. Several scenes stand out, most of them with Cregar, such as when he's been injured and is prowling the catwalks, holding his injured neck, and bars of light flash over his face as he moves towards the camera. Or when he's cornered by the brilliant George Sanders and half of Scotland Yard in one of the upper levels of the theater house, his knife finally out and ready for action--Cregar's bulging eyes stare down his hunters like a beast at bay with the only soundtrack being his labored breathing after his body has been pumped full of several bullets(another thing I liked--he didn't just drop over dead after one shot).The only thing that this movie lacked was more scenes between Cregar and Sanders. That would have made this a 10/10 for me as these two are some of my favorite actors of the time. Cregar is shy, sensitive, and refined as the eccentric Mr. Slade, a mysterious "pathologist" who comes to a residence seeking lodgings for his work. He's taken in by an older couple who also have a young maid and a niece living at the home. Mr. Slade keeps rather odd hours, you see, and he doesn't do a very good job of covering up his work. You will have to overlook the fact that 1940's cinema probably knew nothing about the forensics of murder or blood-splatter, etc. It would be a foolish thing for a serial killer to take up lodging with a family when he could be spotted at any time with bloody clothes(and given the nature of his work, VERY bloody). Merle Oberon is the naive Kitty, the niece of the older couple, and her profession and her beauty create a great conflict in Mr. Slade. On one hand, he finds her very attractive, but on the other, he remembers what sort of females did his brother in and that means Slade might have to do a little carving on her.You really do want to give Slade the benefit of the doubt, and the entire time up until the end, I was suspecting that they were totally wrong about him and that his eccentric behavior was meant to throw the viewer off the track. He's a very sympathetic character, even though he wants to have sex with his brother and kills women about once a week(cast the first stone, as they say), and Cregar's performance is probably the best of his career, not to mention the fact he created one of the best villains of all time--sadly probably not as well known as it should be.This is mandatory viewing for you. Light the lantern, don your coat and cane, and make your way over the cobblestone streets. But, mind the fog.

The B&W photography is probably the best element of this Gothic thriller, wherein Jack The Ripper stalks the White Chapel section of foggy London, killing women. In outdoor scenes, high-contrast lighting, together with dark, demonic shadows in dank alleyways contribute to an air of mystery and suspense. Interiors consist of high ceilings and gaslights, which create the same creepy effect. Most of the plot takes place at night. Darkness is played for all it's worth.In addition to effective lighting, I also liked the performances of Cedric Hardwicke and the very matronly Sara Allgood, who play a mature couple that rents out part of their big house to a lodger: a polite, shy, soft-spoken man with big mournful eyes, named Slade (Laird Cregar). He's big, tall, and very mysterious. Is this Mr. Slade the infamous Jack The Ripper?Although the lighting and some of the acting are quite effective, I do have reservations about this film.The plot is repetitive: a sequence begins with the setup for a woman being killed, then her off-screen murder, followed by suspicion and talk among the townsfolk, and Slade's mysterious activities. The cycle then repeats. There is a lot of filler in the script. The entire story could have been told in thirty minutes. Further, I found the story's ending a tad disappointing.The film's score to some extent dilutes suspense created by the creepy lighting. Not having any score would have amplified the overall sense of terror. Similarly, a couple of Fox musical numbers seriously intrude. They bring the plot to a screeching halt. And, they drain away the tension that had been building.Most of the casting and acting are fine. But Laird Cregar comes across as stiff and wooden. His in-your-face prominence is overdone. I would have preferred a more subtle performance from an actor who was not so scheming and physically imposing.This film is built around the general idea of Jack The Ripper, while taking liberties to get around 1940s censors, and possibly altering historical facts to enhance a dramatic presentation to audiences. It's not a bad cinematic effort. But with some changes in the script, casting, and the deletion of music, it could have been so much more frightening.