The Lodger (1944 film)

The Lodger is a 1944 horror film about Jack the Ripper, based on the novel of the same name by Marie Belloc Lowndes. It stars Merle Oberon, George Sanders and Laird Cregar, features Sir Cedric Hardwicke and was directed by John Brahm from a screenplay by Barré Lyndon.

Lowndes' story had previously been filmed in 1926 as a silent film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and with sound in 1932 as The Lodger. It was remade again in 1953 as Man in the Attic, starring Jack Palance and again in 2009 by David Ondaatje.

Plot

Slade, a serial killer, is a lodger in a 19th Century family's London home. So is a singer, Kitty Langley, who definitely has caught Slade's eye.

Women are being brutally killed in the Whitechapel district. Scotland Yard is investigating and a detective, John Warwick, begins to cast his suspicions in Slade's direction. Warwick, meanwhile, has also developed an attraction to Langley.

Slade goes to see her perform at a cabaret. He goes backstage afterward and tries to make her his next victim, but Warwick's men get there just in time. Unwilling to be taken into police custody, Slade flees to the riverbank and leaps to his death.