Jamaica Inn is a 1939 British adventure thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted from Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel of the same name.

It stars Charles Laughton (who also produced the film through his Mayflower Pictures and Maureen O'Hara in her first major screen role.

Over and above its function as a hostelry, Jamaica Inn houses the clandestine rural headquarters of a gang of cut-throats and thieves, led by innkeeper Joss Merlyn.

They are responsible for a series of engineered shipwrecks in which they extinguish coastal warning beacons, causing ships to run aground on the rocky Cornish coast.

One evening, a young Irish-woman, Mary Yellan, is dropped off by coach near the inn, at the home of the local squire and justice of the peace, Sir Humphrey Pengallan.

The gang angrily resolves to kill Mary as revenge for preventing the wreck, but Joss, who has developed a reluctant admiration for her, rescues her and the two escape by horse-cart.

Besides Laughton and O'Hara, several secondary characters are played by notable stage-and-screen character actors of the time, including "bruiser-type" actor Leslie Banks (who played Count Zaroff in The Most Dangerous Game) as Joss Merlyn; and Robert Newton as Jem Trehearne, a suave young secret-police agent.

[1] Charles Laughton was a co-producer on this movie, through his independent film production company Mayflower Pictures, and he reportedly interfered greatly with Hitchcock's direction.

Laughton portrayed Pengallan as having a mincing walk that went to the beat of a German waltz that he played in his head,[7] and Hitchcock thought it was out of character.

After filming finished, Laughton brought her to Hollywood to play Esmeralda opposite his Quasimodo in the hit 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, after which she became an international star.

[1] On release, the film was a substantial commercial success and in March 1939 Hitchcock moved to Hollywood to begin his contract with David O. Selznick.

The film's light-hearted, often camp, banter and portly landlord, were seen as being too far removed from the darker characters, sinister inn and coastline depicted in du Maurier's story.