Uncovering the Dark Secrets of Man in the Attic (1953) - A Gripping Psychological Thriller

Man in the Attic is a gripping and suspenseful psychological thriller that was released in 1953. Directed by Hugo Fregonese, the film stars Jack Palance as a mysterious and brooding lodger who takes up residence in a Victorian-era London home. Palance's character, who is never named, takes up residence in the attic of the home of the wealthy and eccentric Lees, played by Frances Bavier and Rhys Williams.

As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that the man in the attic is not what he seems. The Lees' niece, played by Constance Smith, becomes increasingly suspicious of the lodger's strange behavior, particularly his fixation on a young dancer named Lily Bonner, played by Byron Palmer.

As tensions rise and the truth is gradually revealed, the film becomes a thrilling and suspenseful exploration of obsession, madness, and murder. With its moody and atmospheric setting, masterful performances, and unforgettable climax, Man in the Attic remains a classic of the psychological thriller genre.

Cast:

Jack Palance as The Lodger
Constance Smith as Lily Bonner
Byron Palmer as Vivian Harley
Frances Bavier as Helen Harley
Rhys Williams as William Harley
Sean McClory as Constable
Leslie Bradley as Robert Harley

Man in the Attic is a 1953 mystery film directed by Hugo Fregonese. It was released in the United States on December 23 by Twentieth Century Fox. The movie is based on the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, which fictionalizes the Jack the Ripper killings, and was previously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927, by Maurice Elvey in 1932, by John Brahm in 1944, and subsequently by David Ondaatje in 2009.
Plot summary

The story takes place in London, 1888. On the third night of the Jack the Ripper killings, Mr Slade, a research pathologist, arrives quite late at the home of Mr and Mrs Harley, looking to rent a room. Slade rents out a room and an attic, which he says he needs for his research work. Mrs Harley notices that Slade acts in a strange manner, for example turning several pictures of actresses to the wall, saying that he can feel their eyes on him. He also mentions that he is usually out late at night working, but he never explains what his research involves.

Mrs Harley's niece, Lily Bonner, arrives to stay at the house shortly afterwards; she is a beautiful stage actress and singer, recently returned from a successful stage production in Paris. Slade leaves the house for the evening, wearing an Ulster coat and carrying a small black bag, and meets Lily before her opening night in London. At the theatre an old colleague of Lily's, Annie Rowley (who has fallen on hard times), goes to see her backstage, but she is later murdered by the Ripper, and Inspector Warwick, who is investigating the murders, informs Lily and tells her that the suspect was seen wearing an Ulster coat and a small black bag. The next morning Warwick goes to see Lily again to ask a few questions, and Slade appears and gives some unorthodox opinions regarding the Ripper and says that he feels the police will never catch him. Mrs Harley's suspicions are further aroused when she smells burning coming from Slade's attic room, and she is convinced that he is the killer when she discovers that Slade had been burning his black bag; however Mr Harley remains unconvinced.
Constance Smith and Jack Palance in Man in the Attic (screenshot)

Lily is attracted to Slade, and he tells her that his mother was also an actress but also that, although she was beautiful, she was also evil and that he both loved and hated her. She behaved in an adulterous manner and his father became an alcoholic after she left him, and she ended her life as a 'woman of the streets' (i.e., a prostitute) and died on the streets in Whitechapel. Slade shows Lily a picture of his mother. Inspector Warwick then arrives to take Lily to the Black Museum, and Slade decides to join them, much to Warwick's displeasure. At the Museum, Slade makes numerous derisive comments about the gruesome nature of the exhibits, although he seems to take a particular interest in the five pictures on the wall of the five Ripper victims, before again telling Warwick that the police will never catch the Ripper.

That same evening, yet another woman is murdered and later Slade is seen washing his hands in the river. During the night, Lily is woken and goes downstairs to find Slade burning some items of clothing, including his Ulster coat, which appears to have blood stains on it, although Slade claims that he spilled some solution on the coat and it might be contaminated.

Meanwhile Warwick checks out Slade's credentials at the University hospital, and is told that Slade is involved in research and works very late hours. Lily asks Slade to meet her backstage at the theatre that evening, but before that Warwick decides to see if Slade's right thumbprint matches one left by the Ripper at the scene of one of his crimes, and enlists Mr Harley's help to search Slade's room. Warwick discovers the picture of Slade's mother in a drawer, but Lily catches them and complains to Warwick that he is harassing an innocent man. Warwick later tries to match the fingerprint, but his assistant notices the picture of Slade's mother and realises that it is Anne Lawrence, the Ripper's first victim, whose picture is on the wall of the Museum.

By this time Slade has gone to the theatre to see the show, but he observes all the lustful looks on the faces of many of the men in the audience as they watch Lily dancing, and becomes agitated, and when he goes to see her backstage he tells her that he hates other men looking at her in such a manner and begs her to go away with him somewhere, but when she resists he pulls a knife out of his pocket and prepares to cut her throat, but he cannot carry out the act, dropping the knife and escaping out of a window. The police, including Warwick, pursue Slade through Whitechapel, but Slade evades them and appears to drown himself in the river; however, despite Warwick and other officers searching for him in the river his body is not found and the possibility is left open that he may have escaped alive.
Cast

Jack Palance as Slade
Constance Smith as Lily Bonner
Byron Palmer as Insp. Paul Warwick
Frances Bavier as Helen Harley
Rhys Williams as William Harley
Sean McClory as Constable No. 1
Leslie Bradley as Constable No. 2
Tita Phillips as Daisy
Lester Matthews as Chief Insp. Melville
Harry Cording as Detective Sgt. Bates
Lisa Daniels as Mary Lenihan
Lilian Bond as Annie Rowley
Isabel Jewell as Katy
Noble Chissell as Theatre Patron (uncredited)

See also

Jack the Ripper in fiction

External links

Media related to Man in the Attic at Wikimedia Commons
Man in the Attic at IMDb
Man in the Attic at AllMovie
Man in the Attic at the TCM Movie Database
Man in the Attic at the American Film Institute Catalog
Man in the Attic is available for free download at the Internet Archive Creative Commons Licensed (Public Domain).

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Jack the Ripper in fiction
Seminal works

The Lodger Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution

Letters

"Dear Boss" letter "From Hell" letter "Saucy Jacky" postcard

Film

Waxworks (1924) The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) Pandora's Box (1929) The Lodger (1932) The Lodger (1944) Room to Let (1950) Man in the Attic (1953) Jack the Ripper (1959) Lulu (1962) A Study in Terror (1965) Hands of the Ripper (1971) Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) The Ruling Class (1972) What the Swedish Butler Saw (1975) Jack the Ripper (1976) Murder by Decree (1979) Time After Time (1979) Jack's Back (1988) Edge of Sanity (1989) Deadly Advice (1994) Ripper (2001) From Hell (2001) Bad Karma (2002) Case Closed: The Phantom of Baker Street (2002) Ripper 2: Letter from Within (2004) The Lodger (2009) Holmes & Watson. Madrid Days (2012) Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)

Parody

Bizarre, Bizarre (1937) The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town (1976) Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)

Music

"Jack the Ripper" (1963) "The Ripper" (1976) "Killer on the Loose" (1980) The Somatic Defilement (2007) Jack the Ripper vs. Hannibal Lecter (2014)

Stage

Earth Spirit (1895 play) Pandora's Box (1904 play) Lulu (1937 opera) The Lodger (1960 opera) The Ruling Class (1968 play)

Comics

Blood of the Innocent (1985) Gotham by Gaslight (1989) From Hell (1989–98) Wonder Woman: Amazonia (1997) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century (2009)

Literature
Sherlock Holmes

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1978) The Whitechapel Horrors (1992) Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography (2005) Dust and Shadow (2009) The Ripper Legacy (2016)

Short stories

"A Toy for Juliette" (1967) "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" (1967)

Other

A Feast Unknown (1969) Time After Time (1979) Night of the Ripper (1984) Phantom Blood (1987) Naomi's Room (1991) Anno Dracula (1992) A Night in the Lonesome October (1993) Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend (1996) Matrix (1998) Lost (2001) Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed (2002) Blood and Fog (2003) The Witches of Chiswick (2003) Broken (2006) Darkside (2007) Lifeblood (2007) Dracula the Un-dead (2009) I, Ripper (2015) The Cutthroat (2017)

Television
Series

Jack the Ripper (1973) Jack the Ripper (1988) Sanctuary (2007–11) Whitechapel (2009–13) Ripper Street (2012–17) Time After Time (2017) Case File nº221: Kabukicho (2019–20) Sherlock in Russia (2020) Beforeigners (2019–present)

Episodes

"Wolf in the Fold" (1967) "Comes the Inquisitor" (1995) "Ripper" (1999) "Sanctuary for All" (2008)

Other

Bridge Across Time (1985 TV film)

Games

Jack the Ripper (1987) Ripper (1996) Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (1999) Shadow Man (1999) MediEvil 2 (2000) Jack the Ripper (2004) Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper (2009) The Ripper (canceled) Assassin's Creed Syndicate: Jack the Ripper (2015) Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey (2019) Letters from Whitechapel (Tabletop Game)

Other

Casebook: Jack the Ripper Blood!: The Life and Future Times of Jack the Ripper

Category

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The films of Hugo Fregonese

Savage Pampas (1945) Where Words Fail (1946) Hardly a Criminal (1949) From Man to Man (1949) One Way Street (1950) Saddle Tramp (1950) Apache Drums (1951) The Mark of the Renegade (1951) My Six Convicts (1952) Untamed Frontier (1952) Decameron Nights (1953) Blowing Wild (1953) Man in the Attic (1953) The Raid (1954) Black Tuesday (1954) The King's Thief (1955) The Wanderers (1956) The Unbeatable Sword (1957) Seven Thunders (1957) Harry Black (1958) Marco Polo (1962) The Secret of Dr. Mabuse (1964) Last Plane to Baalbek (1964) Old Shatterhand (1964) Savage Pampas (1966) Find a Place to Die (1968) Los Monstruos del Terror (1970) The Bad Life (1973) Beyond the Sun (1975)

Categories:

1953 films1950s historical filmsAmerican historical filmsAmerican mystery filmsFilm noirFilms based on works by Marie Adelaide Belloc LowndesFilms set in LondonFilms about Jack the RipperAmerican serial killer films20th Century Fox filmsFilms set in 1888Films directed by Hugo FregoneseFilms scored by Hugo FriedhoferAmerican black-and-white films1950s mystery filmsHistorical mystery films1950s English-language films1950s American films

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_Attic