BOOTLEG FILES 860: “The Lodger,” also known as “The Phantom Fiend” (1932 thriller starring Ivor Novello and Elizabeth Allan).
LAST SEEN: On several online video sites.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On public domain labels.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A lapsed copyright in the United States.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely as a fully restored production.
During the 1920s, the British film industry was a mostly uninspired environment that failed to match the Hollywood film machine or the silver screen output from France, Germany and the Soviet Union in terms of artistry and commercial appeal. That situation shifted somewhat with the 1927 release of “The Lodger,” an adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes’ thriller inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders. Under the direction of the then-unknown Alfred Hitchcock, “The Lodger” was a visually imaginative study in fear and paranoia – and much of its appeal at the time was the against-type casting of matinee idol Ivor Novello as a mysterious figure suspected of being a serial killer.
Hitchcock wasn’t entirely at ease with the silent film medium – the early part of “The Lodger” relies awkwardly on a lengthy static shot of a teletype machine and another visually stagnant view of an electronic news ticker to set the groundwork of the story regarding a fiend who was murdering blonde women in London every Tuesday night. There was also a montage of faces emoting horrified expressions to a radio transmission of the ghastly news – the absence of sound was compensated by the heavily melodramatic reactions shot in extreme close-up, leaving the viewer with no doubt about the horrors being described. And there was also the classic shot of the title character’s endless pacing in his rented room, with the downstair ceiling becoming transparent as the title character is viewed walking on it – a segment that would have been more effective with the sound effects of the heavy steps.
Novello’s performance also sold the presentation. He created an otherworldly element with his agitated gaze and his nervous demeanor, which was more pronounced considering his physical beauty made him stand out from the average-looking actors that Hitchcock cast around him. However, Novello’s popularity also required a change to the story’s denouement – Hitchcock later complained that the Belloc Lowndes story needed to be adjusted because audiences would not have accepted Novello as being a pure villain.
When sound came to film production, having a new version of “The Lodger” seemed like a logical idea – after all, the silent film was a major hit. While Novello was available for this sound edition, Hitchcock was not – Maurice Elvey, a prolific director whose career dated back to 1913, was recruited to replace Hitchcock for this version. The screenplay was also reconfigured to take advantage of the sound medium.
The resulting film was released in 1932 as “The Lodger,” but it was not seen by American audiences until 1935 when a tiny distributor gave it a scant release as “The Phantom Fiend” with about 20 minutes removed from its running time. Today, the original uncut version of “The Lodger” is not available for online viewing – I am uncertain if this version still exists – but the truncated export “The Phantom Fiend” can be found on several video websites, albeit in significantly crummy public domain duped versions with poor sound and visuals.
The biggest change in the 1932 film was giving the title character a specific ethnic identity – he is a Bosnian musician who is an immigrant to London. Novello does an admirable job of creating an Eastern European accent without sounding like Bela Lugosi’s Dracula while he provides the film with invigorating piano interludes. But the film errs by giving the character a distinctive foreign identity that reinforces a sense of xenophobia – whether intended or not, this film suggests that the heinous murders could not have been done by a Briton, but rather by a foreigner. (The same opinions were aired repeated when the Jack the Ripper murders were taking place in the 1880s, with public ire being directed at London’s Eastern European Jewish immigrants.)
Also, the film makes the mistake of having Novello interacting with leading lady Elizabeth Allan (playing the daughter of his landlord) in an innocuous manner, both within their residence and in a park at midday. As a result, Novello’s character is reduced from being the creepy and mysterious figure of the Hitchcock film to a fey and benign figure, which makes the false identification of him as a serial killer utterly implausible.
The film also wastes too much running time in dull comic relief segments with the bickering landlord and his wife, and more irritation comes with a young Jack Hawkins as a brashly obnoxious reporter trying (and failing) to win Allan’s hands. In the Hitchcock version, the reporter’s role was written for a police detective, which gave a more disturbing edge by suggesting emotional jealousy was at the core of law enforcement’s framing of an innocent man for a crime spree.
I have no idea what footage from “The Lodger” was removed for the whittled down presentation of “The Phantom Fiend,” but the latter work has no obvious continuity problems. If anything, it moves very briskly at just over an hour – it makes for an acceptable (if not particularly memorable) B-level thriller. The few reviews from its American release were positive, but it did not resonate at the box office and was quickly forgotten.
Novello never made an impact with American movie audiences, though Allan was briefly at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the mid-1930s but failed to clinch a strong connection with audiences; she found herself banished from Hollywood after she sued her studio for reneging on casting her in star-making roles in “The Citadel” (1938) and “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (1939).
Hitchcock belatedly recalled “The Lodger” after he settled in Hollywood in the early 1940s. He directed a radio drama adaptation and told an interviewer that he hoped to remake the film, but 20th Century Fox acquired the rights and assigned the direction to John Brahm.
Below is “The Phantom Fiend” from a YouTube posting. If anyone has the original uncut version of “The Lodger,” please let me know and I will gladly share it.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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