Well, that might just be because the Master of Suspense isn't really making an especially suspenseful film here, or at least not on purpose. Forget "Psycho", because when I think about Banks as an innkeeper in an adventure film from the '30s, I can't help but think of "The Most Dangerous Game", but don't get too excited, kids, because this film isn't even as tense as "The Most Dangerous Game".
Retrospect should really help this film, because it deserves to be respected for being Hitchcock's first adaptation of a piece by Daphne du Maurier, the writer of "Rebecca" and "The Birds", and because it's hard to not think about a Hitchcock film set in a hotel and not get a little bit tensed up, especially when Leslie Banks is there. I guess snobby critics can dislike a film that is not simply from the 1930s, but directed by Alfred Hitchcock, especially when the film evokes memories of future Hitchcock projects that are a much bigger deal. Wow, that was terrible, although it's not that much worse than the film itself, or at least that's what others are saying. The fact that there is a little delusion mixed in is only icing on the cake, along with some excellent work from Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara. But then it picks up steam, even with the dated material and primitive special effects, as there is more than one character who is not who he says he is.
Riddle me this: When is a Hitchcock film not a Hitchcock film but in reality a Hitchcock film? The answer is "Jamaica Inn" which on the surface is just another period piece that gets off to an awkward start in introducing all the principal characters. That's because Patience's husband, Joss(Leslie Banks), is the leader of a bunch of cutthroats, responsible for a bunch of deadly shipwrecks in the area, who have now turned on Traherne(Robert Newton), one of their own. But luckily for Mary, Sir Humphrey Pengallen(Charles Laughton) makes up the difference and escorts her to the correct address.
Recently orphaned, Mary(Maureen O'Hara) travels to stay with her Aunt Patience(Marie Ney) but soon finds she lives in the kind of place that the coach driver wants nothing to do with.
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