London, 1888: on the night of the third Jack the Ripper killing, soft-spoken Mr. Slade, a research pathologist, takes lodgings with the Harleys, including a gloomy attic room for "experiments." Mrs. Harley finds Slade odd and increasingly suspects the worst; her niece Lily (star of a decidedly Parisian stage revue) finds him interesting and increasingly attractive. Is Lily in danger, or are her mother's suspicions merely a red herring?
Man in the Attic is a 1953 American horror film directed by Hugo Fregonese and starring Jack Palance, Constance Smith and Byron Palmer. The screenplay was by Barré Lyndon and Robert Presnell Jr. based on the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes which fictionalizes the Jack the Ripper killings. It had been previously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927, by Maurice Elvey in 1932, by John Brahm in 1944; it was again filmed by David Ondaatje in 2009.
