Excellent but underrated film

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn strays from Daphne du Maurier's dark novel, instead resembling an Enid Blyton adventure with a body count. To some that's a deal-breaker, but for me it evokes all of the dated stories I read growing up. The scruffy smugglers and the squire with his outrageous eyebrows, Mary's determination to overcome them, and especially the gloomy atmosphere. It's all absolutely charming.The shipwreck scenes are tense. The comic relief is on par with some of the best Hitchcock films. The squire mocks his guests and has his horse paraded into his dining room. Uncle Joss insists his wife carries Mary's luggage inside, only to then grab it himself and hurl it two thirds of the way up the stairs. What might've been a simple drama is turned into an entertaining caper deserving of cult film status. The one complaint I have is that O'Hara shrieking "Aunt Patience Aunt Patience" is as grating as nails on a chalkboard.

for Charles Laughton must see this film. for his seductive performance. for his great science to transform a character in an entire story. for the art to give special aura to a film who has not the status of masterpiece. "Jamaica Inn" is a Hitchcock. a version of the book of Daphne de Maurier. a story from XIX century with bandits and the innocent, brave fragile victim. and everything becomes spectacular for the force of an actor to change each scene in a gem. "Jamaica Inn " gives a state more than a credible story. and this is a precious virtue. because it reminds and transforms and imposes pieces of literature in a seductive fragment of old ages.

I gave up reading the other reviews about halfway through as just about everybody thought that Laughton's performance was either absolutely glorious or hideously overdone, while those same reviewers seemed to think that this was either Hitchcock's worst film (or at least a contender for same) or a good effort ruined by Mr. Laughton's excesses. Maybe we should put ourselves back in 1939 and look at everything from that vantage point.It's seems hard to remember now (and surely nobody ever mentions this, in or out of these reviews), but for the decade of approximately 1932 to 1944 Charles Laughton was arguably the most famous and respected British actor on the planet! Gielgud had some stage fame, and Olivier, Redgrave and Richardson were coming along, while the movies could celebrate Donat and Colman as British romantic idols (with Olivier on the horizon), but it was Laughton who took on the crown increasingly abdicated by George Arliss as Britain's leading actor - at least to the rest of the world. So, when we start to talk about Hitchcock and Laughton, and the latter's possible adverse effects on the former where JAMAICA INN is concerned, it should be remembered that while gaining some international recognition over that period, in 1939 Hitchcock was a virtual non-entity in the worldwide movie-going mind next to Laughton. Laughton didn't need Hitchcock, and Hitchcock may not have needed Laughton, but it was still a feather in any director's cap to snare Laughton for a movie role, and this man who had given astoundingly memorable performances on both sides of the Atlantic in HENRY VIII, RUGGLES OF RED GAP, LES MISERABLES, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, REMBRANDT and VESSEL OF WRATH could only do Hitchcock's career good (his prior stars like Novello, Banks, Donat, Redgrave, and even Gielgud were simply not the things that film legends were made of in 1939, whatever some of them would subsequently become), so that I'm sure that, Laughton being one of the film's producers (although unlisted as such), Hitchcock took on this project knowing full well that it would be a Laughton vehicle before it would be a Hitchcock movie. Oh, yes, in subsequent interviews Hitch might complain of Laughton's performance in the film, but I'd bet my left shoulder that he did no such complaining at any time during the film's making, and that he was simply overjoyed to be working with him. Having said that, given the screenplay he worked with, Hitchcock did a very creditable job in directing. Yes, we might take note of the miniature ships seen in distance shots, but that was certainly not as bad as some of the cardboard audience members seen in 1934's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, and both the opening and closing storm scenes are beautifully rendered (and the murders in the opening scene quite spectacularly staged). Otherwise, there simply wasn't very much to work with. The only scenes in the film that were really "Hitchcockian" were the heroine's view from above of the hanging of Trahearne and her subsequent cutting of the death rope through the ceiling, and much later, both the understated and unseen release of Trahearne by Joss's wife, and then Maureen O'Hara heroically struggling to raise the flaming warning flare in the midst of a raging gale. The latter could easily stand in for an early 19th century British visual equivalent to the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, so stentorian is its presentation, and it is surely the visual highlight of the entire film! (And that Hitchcock should favor a mere female with such a physically courageous act!) Other than for those scenes, the success of the film falls not on the shoulders of Hitchcock, but on the uncannily mesmerizing visage of Charles Laughton in every scene he is in. The latter MAKES the film, so why blame Laughton for its relative failure in terms of Hitchcockian expectations? In 2016, you are simply not seeing (or even ready to expect) what the 1939 film was intended to convey before all else - Laughton's performance!Warning: If you should be seeing this film on a Pop Flix set called "Deadly Mysteries Collection", be prepared to miss an entire reel between the time that the hero and heroine escape to Pengallon's castle and Trahearne and Pengallon's subsequent arrival at Jamaica Inn, with O'Hara already there, warning her aunt of their intentions. They have simply left it out!

Jamaica Inn begins with a gang of pirates wrecking a ship, killing the survivors, and looting the booty. We cut to Charles Laughton and a false nose and eyebrows, taking a lady in who is looking for her sister at the infamous Jamaica Inn.The picture is not really about the Jamaica Inn so much as about the pirates who operate out of there. There are a few cool twists, and some attractive leads, but the tone is Dickensian and theatrical, not what you might expect from a Hitchcock. Its a period piece, and some of the costuming and acting contributes to the hokey tone. That was initially what turned me off it, along with the VHS-like quality of that first public domain release I saw. Don't bother unless you're watching the high definition version. This is a public domain piece so is quite common in horrible versions with fuzzy picture and audio so bad you can hardly understand it. The 2015 Cohan Blu Ray is the only way to watch.Overall its a good news bad news situation. At times, the dialogue is wooden and the framing boring mid-shots like in the worst Hitchcock movies. At other times, it has a nice flair for a dramatic twist, like the best Hitchcock. I'd call it non-essential viewing.