Highly Overrated But Still Good

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

While Comparing Hitchcock's Early Period Films this one is Usually Relegated to the Second Tier and other more Popular, or well known, Movies are Elevated above this and it is Considered a "Minor" effort in the Director's Filmography.But Objectively it Holds Up as well as any from the Era and in some respects, even More so. It is Pure Hitch and even though in Later Years He Commented on Regrets concerning a Major Plot Point, it is Exactly that Plot Point that Exclaims His Unorthodox Artistry and Experimental, but Polished, Flourishes that made Alfred Hitchcock a Film Artist of the First Order.The Film's Ingredients: Actors Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, and Desmond Tester are Superb and Fleshed Out. In Melodramatic Cinematic Terms the Center by which Hitch Unleashes His, now Familiar Themes within a Movie Making Playground are Classic and Copied to this Day.The Cityscape Terrorism Plot has become a Timeless Time-Bomb. The Suspense, Pre-War Paranoia, and Technical Montage Techniques are Crisp and Captivating, even Today. There are Plot Twists that the most Seasoned of Moviegoers won't See Coming.Controversial since its Release Date, it is a 1930's Hitchcock Movie that is Underrated, Misunderstood, and Remains a Must See for Film Historians or Anyone who likes being Manipulated by a Movie from a Master Manipulator.

A Scotland Yard undercover detective is on the trail of a saboteur who is part of a plot to set off a bomb in London. But when the detective's cover is blown, the plot begins to unravel.This film has received some notoriety for having a young boy carry a bomb around London. And I think that is warranted, although it is nothing to apologize for (Hitchcock had apparently "regretted" this later in life). What could make the story more suspenseful than placing danger in the hands of someone so innocent? The story comes from Joseph Conrad, the same author whose work inspired "Apocalypse Now". I must say I have read "Heart of Darkness" and did not particularly enjoy it, causing me to go no further with Conrad's work. This movie, however, makes me think "Secret Agent" might be worth picking up.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, at this stage just the vigorous maverick of the Gaumont-British sentry, carved a mercilessly sensational bit from Conrad's The Secret Agent into a proficient drill in suspense. Sabotage is flawed plotting, but unqualified histrionics. Edgily dismissing all but the facade of motivation, the great manipulator thrusts his lens into the nucleus of Conrad's plot and extracts a giftedly implemented splinter of a story. What makes Hitchcock Hitchcock is that his technique is its own justification.Invariably the master of his movie's fate, this sculptor of modern cinema has compacted this story to the nuts and bolts, choosing just those events which he could crook to his dramatic command. His tempo is deceivingly measured, but he lurches mercilessly to his climaxes and makes the effect intense and unexpected. The excellent Oscar Homolka, Sylvia Sidney, John Loder and that winning youngster Desmond Tester, are held tightly to the frontier of plot development and, inside the slender confines Hitchcock allows them, supply thoroughgoing characterizations.For reasons vague, minor cinema owner Verloc has been ordered to terrorize London. His gateway is to disable the city's lighting works. London receives the blackout as a gag. The foreign agent retaining him cautions that London better not chuckle next time: A time bomb, placed in a Piccadilly cloakroom, would truly try the British sense of humor.Verloc, being watched by Scotland Yard, is incapable of sending the bomb himself and picks his wife's baby brother as the innocuous courier of terror. The kid takes the paper-wrapped bomb, calculated to explode at quarter two, and commences his venture across town. Verloc has cautioned him to leave the little box no later than half one. Despite the Master of Suspense's later nitpicking of his work here, he orders the sequence mischievously. It's excruciating to have to helplessly watch the heedless youngster's easygoing movement across London, stopping at shop windows, volunteered by a sidewalk vender for a presentation, postponed by a parade, by traffic and finicky policemen.Homolka as Verloc is an ideal means for Hitchcock's calculated rhythm. Sidney as his baffled wife, mothering her young brother, John Loder as the amorous Scotland Yard sergeant, William Dewhurst as the bomb maker and of course Tester are severally solid. But this is Hitchcock's film and a worthy early one.

Master of Suspense director Sir Alfred Hitchcock started his successful career in his home country, and this was one of the last films he made before going to the United States (although he did return home for Frenzy), I was interested. Basically Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka) is a cinema owner and a member of a gang planning to sabotage operations in London, and he lives with his wife Sylvia (Beetlejuice's Sylvia Sidney) and her teenage brother Stevie (Desmond Tester). His wife and her brother know nothing about Karl's big secret, even after a big incident where many lights in a part of London were turned off, but there are worse things to happen than that. Suspecting something is going on with Verloc, Scotland Yard assigns undercover Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer (John Loder) to keep an eye on him, working near the cinema and investigate. Sylvia didn't originally know anything, but her suspicion arises, and at a reasonably good time because the gang assign Karl to put a bomb in the metro, so he sends young Stevie with a bag for him to "deliver", but he does not make it all the way to the right location for the explosion. In the end the villain Karl gets what he deserves being stabbed by his own wife, and London seems to be safe from anymore sabotage incidents, and Sylvia walks away with Ted. Also starring Joyce Barbour as Renee, Matthew Boulton as Superintendent Talbot, S.J. Warmington as Hollingshead, William Dewhurst as Professor A.F. Chatman, and Hitchcock's cameo is as the man passing looking up when the lights go back on. The acting is reasonable, the best scene is certainly unknowingly carrying the bomb in the bag, and there are some good tense moments you would expect from the great director, a watchable mystery thriller. Very good!