BOOTLEG FILES 863: “Room to Let” (1950 British drama inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders).
LAST SEEN: We cannot confirm the last presentation of this film.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On a collector-to-collector label.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: An obscure film that fell through the cinematic cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.
Unless you are a scholar of either the Hammer Film Productions canon or cinematic endeavors inspired by the Jack the Ripper crimes, there is an excellent chance that you never heard of the 1950 British film “Room to Let.” And that would be a great shame, because “Room to Let” might be the greatest film you never saw.
In concept, there was little in “Room to Let” to inspire greatness. With a 68-minute running time, the film was never intended to be more than the lower half of a double feature bill in British cinemas. The film’s director, Godfrey Grayson, was not responsible for any work that could be mistaken for a classic. And the film covers territory that was previously plumbed in critically and commercially successful works by Alfred Hitchcock with “The Lodger” in 1927 and John Brahm with “The Lodger” in 1944.
Yet Grayson’s little B-grade obscurity outshines the works of Hitchcock and Brahm with sharp plotting, wonderfully focused performances and a sense of intelligence and style that transcends its cheapie roots. By the closing credits, it is impossible not to wonder why this film fell into obscurity.
“Room to Let” opens in the present day when the now-aged reporter Curly Minter (played by Jimmy Hanley with a hair and make-up job reminiscent of Robert Donat’s aged Mr. Chips) is invited to a dinner where he recounts one of the strangest stories he ever covered. The film then goes into a flashback to 1904 where Minter covers a fire at a mental hospital that killed five of the patients in a section for the criminally insane – except that there is a brief disagreement whether that section housed five or six patients. Minter’s attempt to report that one of the patients escaped is squashed by his editor, who fears such a story would spark a panic among London’s population.
Shortly after the fire, the scene shifts to the Musgrave household in London, which is occupied by the wheelchair bound matriarch Mrs. Musgrave (Christine Silver), her beautiful daughter Molly (Constance Smith) and their maid Alice (Merle Tottenham). The Musgraves are what the British refer to as down-at-heel and they advertise for a lodger to help cover their expenses. Their advertisement is answered by someone calling himself Dr. Fell – as played by Valentine Dyall, he is a stark and humorless aristocratic figure (complete with silk top hat and cape) who can pay for his lodgings for the next three months.
Unfortunately for the Musgrave home, Dr. Fell starts to run the residence. He insists on turning down the gaslights, keeping the shades drawn and preventing Molly from having her boyfriend Minter as a visitor. When Molly arranges for a job interview so the household can become financially self-sufficient, Dr. Fell physically stops her from leaving the residence. While Minter becomes suspicious that Dr. Fell might be the sixth patient of the mental hospital fire who escaped an incinerating death, Mrs. Musgrave learns that her lodger has more than an academic knowledge of the Jack the Ripper murders that terrorized London’s Whitechapel section in 1888.
However, when Minter brings a constable to the Musgrave home to rescue its residents from their increasingly unstable lodger, Mrs. Musgrave is found tipped over from her wheelchair on the first floor while Dr. Fell is discovered shot to death in a locked room on the second floor – but there is no trace of murder weapon. What created the scene that forced Mrs. Musgrave out of her wheelchair while leaving Dr. Fell dead in a locked room with no obvious culprit, let alone the instrument of his demise?
“Room the Let” was adapted from a 1947 BBC Radio play written by Margery Allingham, which bore than a passing resemblance to Marie Belloc Lowndes’ 1913 novel “The Lodger,” which told the tale of an older woman with a young daughter who rented a room to a peculiar man who is suspected of being responsible for Jack the Ripper-style serial killings. Allingham’s work had enough differences from the Belloc Lowndes work to avoid the charge of outright plagiarism, especially with the third act murder mystery and the invigorating explanation for how it occurred. (And, no, there are no spoilers to be found in this review!)
Director Grayson moves “Room to Let” along at a brisk pace that is fueled by the spirited performances. Dyall’s villain is a force of intellectual rather than physical menace – he takes over the Musgrave through his dominating personality, using his voice to maintain the captivity of the household. Smith’s beauty masks a wonderfully steely determination not to become Dr. Fell’s prisoner – and the power of her personality overshadows her would-be suitors played with epicene style by Hanley and Charles Hawtrey, the spindly comic actor who later gained stardom as the campy cut-up of the Carry On films. (Oddly, Smith would play a similar role when she relocated to Hollywood a few years later to co-star in “Man in the Attic,” a remake of “The Lodger.”)
Shout outs are needed for cinematographer Cedric Williams – particularly in the noirish scene when Molly confronts Dr. Fell – and Frank Spencer’s score, which perfectly accentuates the growing sense of menace without clobbering the audience through too-obvious music cues.
Due to its short running time and lack of bankable marquee talent, “Room to Let” had no theatrical value outside of Britain. However, the film crossed the Atlantic thanks to CBS, which acquired it as part of a slew of British features that the television network used to fill its late-night broadcast slots during the 1950s and early 1960s. Thus, the only Americans who became acquainted with the film were insomniacs in the early years of network television who caught broadcasts during the twilight hours.
To date, there has been no commercial home entertainment release of “Room to Let” in the American market; incredibly, it is not on YouTube or the other major online video sites. Sinister Cinema once offered the film on video while the collector-to-collector service Loving the Classics sells a DVD sourced from a broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4.
Unless a label like The Criterion Collection includes “Room to Let” in a round-up of Hammer’s output, it is unlikely the film will have a proper home entertainment release. And that is a major shame because “Room to Let” is a forgotten gem that deserves to be praised as a mini-classic of the thriller genre.
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.
Listen to Phil Hall’s award-winning podcast “The Online Movie Show with Phil Hall” on SoundCloud and his radio show “Nutmeg Chatter” on WAPJ-FM in Torrington, Connecticut, with a new episode every Sunday. His new book “100 Years of Wall Street Crooks” is now in release through Bicep Books.