Man In The Attic
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Film: B-
How great
was Alfred Hitchcock that his breakthrough film The Lodger (1926) was remade thee time over the next three
decades? He was great and he was only
rivaled by the subject of all four films, Jack The Ripper. After three films with the same title, the
producers decided the film would need a new title, thus this one became
director Hugo Fregonese’s Man In The
Attic (1953) and it is an interesting independent production.
20th
Century-Fox distributed it at the time, but it is VCI finally issuing it on
DVD. The novelty with this version is
that it features Jack Palance as The Ripper and it plays loosely with the case,
but Palance is not over-the-top as he would later be in the Horror telefilms he
did with Dan Curtis in the 1960s and 1970s.
He is good here. Later work in
Tim Burton’s Batman and as host of a
TV version of Ripley’s Believe It… Or
Not (add sinister breath at the ellipses) is also part of his turn here.
The film
even has some oddly placed musical moments (whether it is of the Backstage
Musical kind or by street hookers) that are somewhat eerie considering the
subject matter at hand, but the graphic nature of the film is limited by the
production code, despite the fact that it is practically a B-movie. The casting of mostly unknowns actually works
here, but the film has not aged as well as other tales of The Ripper, though
all have suffered since The Hughes Brothers gave us From Hell in 2001.
The full
frame monochrome image is form a decent print, but is a bit softer than usual,
with some slight visual noise throughout.
The Video Black is not bad, but details could be better. Cinematographer Leo Tover, A.S.C., does not
deliver anything we would think of as Film Noir, nor does he go for overly-foggy
atmospherics (though there are instances of fog), but he does offer a stylized
world that does not try too hard, which makes this version unique as much
visually as it is in its script structure.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono shows its age, but dialogue and Lionel
Newman’s score are clear enough, as are those vocal songs. The only extra is a photo gallery set to
music that lasts 1:14.
It should
also be said the ending is also a “production code” safe one, but also
interesting at that. The Hughes Brothers
said they watched every Ripper picture made before doing From Hell and in some way, I can see how this one may have
influenced their film. Man In The Attic is worth a look as a
unique chapter in Ripper cinema.
- Nicholas Sheffo
