This is basically a remake of 1944 Lodger, starring Laird Cregar as another serial killer terrorizing Victorian London of 1940's Hollywood, shot again as black and white, written again by Barre Lyndon, directed again by John Brahm and and featuring Linda Darnell (replacing Merle Oberon) as another glamorous vaudeville performer courted by the killer. And yes, George Sanders gives support again, this time as a psychiatrist. However, Linda's unscrupulous Netta, so beautiful in lovely rose-decorated dress, is a villainess instead of heroine in peril, and Cregar's insane killer is not sex-hating mutilator of female bodies. Actually, this intriguing, if fictitious psychosis of doomed and sympathetic protagonist gives literally sanitized version of serial killing, which in real life is usually motivated by truly filthy perversions and not mental illness and never falls into the innocent-by-the-reason-of-insanity-category like in Hangover Square. All this lack of realism definitely helps the movie - made with all the class and taste of Golden Age Hollywood, where the dialogue and imagery are clean, the acting is melodramatic and women glamorous, Hangover Square provides fascinating story and milieu, and some fantastic shots like Netta's murder (!) which is reflected in the mirror lit by opulent gas-lamp, .
Review of Hangover Square
