THE PHANTOM FIEND

 

One of the most famous silent films is Alfred Hitchcock's THE LODGER, a 1927 adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes' novel about Jack the Ripper. The story has been remade several times over the years, and I recently discovered a version on YouTube that gets almost no attention whatsoever. 

THE PHANTOM FIEND (also known as THE LODGER) is a 1932 British film that was the first sound version of the tale. Hitchcock himself was offered the chance to do the story again, but in the end the movie was directed (in an underwhelming fashion) by Maurice Elvey. 

The most notable thing about THE PHANTOM FIEND is that it has the same leading man as the 1927 THE LODGER: Ivor Novello. In both pictures Novello plays a mysterious man who is suspected to be a man called The Avenger, the perpetrator of a series of horrid killings of young women. 

In the 1927 THE LODGER Novello's character wasn't given a name, but in THE PHANTOM FIEND he calls himself Michel Angeloff. Angeloff is a strange fellow who becomes a lodger in the house of a lower-middle class London family, the Buntings. Daisy (Elizabeth Allan), the daughter of the family, works as a switchboard operator, and she and Angeloff start to fall for each other. But the lodger's weird ways and the continuing murders cause Daisy's parents and noisy reporter John (a very young Jack Hawkins) to believe the man is the guilty party. 

THE PHANTOM FIEND isn't on the same level as the '27 THE LODGER. It appears to have a smaller budget, and it lacks the style of Hitchcock's classic. It also isn't as good as the 1944 version of the story from 20th Century Fox. 

Ivor Novello, if anything, acts even more guilty in THE PHANTOM FIEND than he did in his first go-round as the Lodger. Norvello was certainly a handsome enough fellow (he was a huge celebrity in 1920s England), but here he uses a trace of an accent, and for the most part he speaks his dialogue in a deliberate manner. This, along with his use of an unnerving stare, gives Novello an almost Bela Lugosi-like vibe. (Ironically, at one point a police official actually compares the Avenger to a vampire.) Unlike the original lodger, Michel Angeloff is given much more of a background--he hails from Central Europe and he's a musician. 

Angeloff is still off-putting enough to make one wonder why Daisy would fall for him, especially since Elizabeth Allan (MARK OF THE VAMPIRE) injects the character with a lively, independent spirit. Her Daisy is far from a naive damsel in distress--at one point she slaps reporter (and would-be suitor) John across the face. 

It needs to be said that Jack Hawkins' John deserves such treatment. The reporter is an annoying, boorish fellow who treats Daisy as if he owns her, and also goes on about how he hates foreigners. (With the men she has to deal with in this movie one has to ask why Daisy doesn't just move away from London altogether.)

The ending of THE PHANTOM FIEND is different from the '27 THE LODGER, and it involves an element that seems to come out of nowhere just to wrap up the plot. This climax does not improve upon the original. 

It's almost unfair to write a blog post on THE PHANTOM FIEND, since the version I saw is apparently an American cut that is shorter than the original British production. The picture & sound quality was also poor. One can tell that there was an attempt at some moody photography for THE PHANTOM FIEND, but it's hard to appreciate from the version I viewed on YouTube. There's a lot of presumed "comic" moments involving Daisy's parents and John that fall flat, and there isn't a lot of suspense. There is at least one nice visual moment, when John is making a motion with his hands as if he's cutting his throat. There's an immediate cut to Angeloff moving a bow across a violin in almost the same manner. 

Perhaps one day a restored, uncut version of THE PHANTOM FIEND will be available, and then we can truly determine how effective the movie really is. Until then, the 1927 and 1944 productions of THE LODGER are the best cinematic adaptations of the story.