The Phantom Fiend

The Lodger is a 1932 British thriller film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Ivor Novello, Elizabeth Allan and Jack Hawkins. It is based on the novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, also filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927 (also starring Novello); by John Brahm in 1944; by Hugo Fregonese, as Man in the Attic, in 1953; and by David Ondaatje in 2009. The film is also known as The Phantom Fiend in the USA, where it was released in truncated form in 1935. In the 2001 film Gosford Park, Ivor Novello is taunted that the film "should just flop like that." The screenwriter Julian Fellowes states in an audio commentary that Novello's talkie remake failed while the silent original had been a hit.