Best movie of this year hands down!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

The performance of Jack Palance is the main reason to see The Man in the Attic. It is one of his most restrained performances and all the better for it, he is perfectly cast, looking the part with his tall slender frame and Machiavellian features, and his emotionally vulnerable and also sinister interpretation is a most interesting one.He is well supported by most of the supporting cast, with Rhys Williams being very good and Constance Smith is very charming in a rather caricatured role. Byron Palmer is appropriately business-like in the police inspector role. Frances Bavier just about passes muster and suitably cynical but her accent with those twangy vowels(the pronunciation of bag jars) is not convincing at all while Tita Phillips is weak and wooden as maid Daisy. The Man in the Attic looks great, with Victorian London being sumptuously and chillingly evoked and the black and white cinematography is beautifully done. The Man in the Attic has a haunting, chilling even in the first five minutes(which is also the most suspenseful the film gets), music score that adds a great deal to the film's atmosphere, it is more 1950s than authentic 1888 but it is not that jarring actually.The script while predictable in places is at times subtly amusing and often thoughtful without falling into the traps of being too speculative, one-sided or insisting it's the truth. The story is staid in action but it is involving and neatly structured with a truly exciting horse and carriage chase, having enough to keep you hooked. Slade is an interesting character, the film entertains and is well-paced, deliberate but never dull.It's a good film that does a lot right but at the same time it felt that something was missing. It is lacking in suspense and feels at times a little too neat and too careful, with the exceptions of the opening and the chase, with not quite enough to keep you guessing, mainly because I was convinced that Slade was guilty early on. This could have been improved a little if Slade was introduced later and that more was done with the investigating, what made Jack the Ripper so infamous and the murders, while what the film did with focusing on Slade was admirable it was a little too character driven. Jack the Ripper's murders were among the most shocking in history, and The Man in the Attic handled its murders rather ordinarily with them only being described.The Man in the Attic does end very abruptly and predictably with it being obvious how things were going to end, though keeping things ambiguous and open for interpretation was a wise move and the right(and only) thing to do, otherwise there would have been criticisms about the film butchering history. The Man in the Attic is also severely hurt by the musical numbers which should have been scrapped altogether. They are completely out of place, completely irrelevant to the story, are uninteresting choreographed(being more vulgar than sexy) and only manage to slow the film down. Overall, a good, enjoyable and well-made film with a great Palance and the many good things done very well indeed but something was missing. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox

Almost 130 years after the notorious series of brutal murders in the Whitechapel district of London, the identity of who the culprit was is still being pondered. There have been theories as to who it was, and a fictional culprit became the source of a Marie Belloc Lowndes novel and five movies spawned from it. Of course, the most famous are the 1927 Hitchcock film and a 20th Century Fox 1944 remake with Laird Cregar and Merle Oberon of which this is pretty much an almost identical remake of. The only difference really between the two is in the casting of the title character. Laird Cregar was a portly character actor who pretty much took over where Z-grade British horror star Tod Slaughter had left off, although his films were definitely higher budgeted and certainly better detailed. Here, the role of Slade has been seemingly youthened (and definitely thinned) with the casting of Jack Palance, fresh from his Oscar nominated villain turns in "Sudden Fear" and "Shane".While Palance may seem younger and definitely thinner, the creepiness of Slade is still prevalent with his deep set eyes, somewhat gaunt facial features, and that cloak that screams "Jekyll and Hyde". The lovely Constance Smith takes on the role which Merle Oberon had played in 1944, a personable music hall star who has a compassionate nature and an unexplained attraction towards the mysterious lodger. The music hall numbers are practically identical to the previous version, and in the final one (where Palance attends), the terror really erupts through his eyes as he notices the lust of the male audience staring at Ms. Smith.As this is pretty much a re-tread of what film audiences had just seen only nine years before, there really aren't many chills, just the tension leading up to the exposure of Palance as a psycho. In fact, I'm not really sure that the writers intended to say that Palance was the actual Jack the Ripper. He could have just become obsessed with Smith, been sympathetic to what he psychotically felt the ripper's mission was, and just took it in his own hands to try to "save" Smith from herself. Frances Bavier ("The Andy Griffith Show's" Aunt Bea) and Rhys Williams offer decent characterizations as Smith's aunt and uncle, but Byron Palmer seems ineffectual as the inspector determined to expose Palance.While the London atmosphere is definitely appropriately murky, the story is much better fictionalized as the 1979 Sherlock Holmes mystery "Murder By Decree" which gives a more logical explanation as to who the killer was and why Scotland Yard was never able to solve it (or at least reveal the truth). This should be viewed strictly as a moody thriller that doesn't really try to claim its telling the real story, but either as a possibility or the story of a wronged man who may have been crazy but only had circumstantial evidence which lead to him being believed to be the notorious serial killer of ages gone by.

The notorious Jack The Ripper killings have been dealt with by the movies in both ostensibly authentic and outright fictional terms. This one falls in the latter category, and is actually no fewer than the fourth adaptation (all of which I own and have now watched) of Marie Belloc-Lowndes' novel THE LODGER! Incidentally, though a Fox production, the film has somehow fallen into the Public Domain and, in fact, the print I acquired (presumably culled from the substandard VCI DVD) left a lot to be desired! While generally enjoyable (in spite of the obvious lack of surprise) and benefiting immensely from Jack Palance's typically intense central performance (making up for the undercasting of the other major roles), the end result does feel redundant – considering that the latest version was only 9 years away – in much the same way that the 1932 Talkie came across with respect to Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 Silent original! Interestingly, while the first two – both emanating from Britain and starring the same leading man, Ivor Novello – made the protagonist out to be an avenger of one of the Ripper's victims being himself suspected of the crimes, in each American remake, there is no question about his identity as the guilty party (Laird Cregar had essayed the role in 1944)! The least successful element here, then, is undoubtedly the scoring and staging of the eye-rolling (in more than the expected ways) musical numbers.

***SPOILERS*** Third remake of the 1912 novel about the notorious Jack the Ripper who terrorized the Whitechaple/Kensington districts of London in the late 1880's.In this updated version were, like in the previous two, kept in the dark to just who the Ripper really is. Even though it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to spot his identity within the first few minutes of the movie! Thats even before he,in his secret identity, even comes on the scene!Looking for a place to stay Slade, Jack Palance, finds his home away from home, the local city morgue, at the Harley house. Having the use of the attic Slade can conduct his secret experiments without anybody bothering or spying on him.While Slade, who works night at the morgue, is doing his day-work in the attic for what he explains to the Harleys is the benefit of future generations, in the field of pathology, the mysterious Jack the Ripper is out murdering young women in the neighborhood. It doesn't take long for Slad's landlady Mrs. Helen Harley, Frances Bavier, to suspect him of being the Ripper. It's Helen's husband Willliam, Rhys Williams, who's always making excuses for Slade in his secretive and suspicious behavior that has Slade from either being thrown out of the Harley home or even being reported to the police as a suspect in the Ripper murders!The most unusual and at the same time naive character in this whole scenario is the Harley's niece the beautiful showgirl girl Lilly Bonner, Constance Smith. Lily who despite Slade's weird and even threatening behavior in her presents is somehow in love with the neurotic mortician. Not really knowing if Slade is the Ripper or not his very actions should have warned Lily to stay at least at arms, or knifes, length away from the nut-case! But being both fascinated and in love with the eye popping and what seems like religiously fanatical wacko Lily instead takes him into both her confidence as well as her dressing room! That's as she's undressing, in prudish and Victorian England no less, right in front of the sweating and goggling mental case.Jack Palance is at his sinister best as the mysterious Slade the Lodger who lifts the movie a few notches above what it would have been without him being in it. Having a good idea of who the Ripper is I was far more interested, as well as entertained, by Plalance's over the top performance then anything else, in having to do with the movie's plot, in the film.***SPOILER ALERT*** The ending is much like the 1944 movie version-"The Lodger" with Laird Creger-with the Ripper disappearing into the night, or the Thames River, never to be seen or heard from again! That's until Hollywood, or a foreign or independent film studio, decide to make a new and updated movie version of Jack the Ripper and his criminal adventures.