Number Seventeen is a 1932 British comedy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring John Stuart, Anne Grey and Leon M. Lion.

The film, which is based on the 1925 burlesque stage play Number Seventeen written by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon,[1] concerns a group of criminals who commit a jewel robbery and hide their loot in an old house over a railway leading to the English Channel.

Along a coastline in rural England, police Detective Barton arrives at a house, Number 17, marked for sale or rent.

Barton, who introduces himself as Fordyce, asks the stranger about the contents of his pockets before the shadow of a hand is shown reaching for a doorknob.

The stranger, who later introduces himself as Ben, a homeless derelict, searches the dead body and finds handcuffs and a pistol, which he takes.

Three people arrive at the windswept house: Brant, Nora (a deaf-mute woman) and a third person named Henry Doyle.

Brant produces a pistol of his own and asks Doyle to search Barton/Fordyce, Ben and Miss Rose Ackroyd.

A man named Sheldrake shows up and retrieves a diamond necklace, which he has hidden in the upper portion of a toilet.

The thieves, after dispatching the conductor, walk to the front of the train, shoot the fireman and catch the driver as he faints.

The film makes extensive use of miniature sets, including a model train, bus and ferry.

Many critics who may be unfamiliar with the film's comedy origins have judged Number Seventeen as a failed attempt at serious drama.

It is asking a lot of an audience—even a picture one—to make them believe a woman accomplice of a band of thieves will fall in love at first sight with a detective and prevent his being done in by her associates."

The review observed that the climactic train crash scene was "very good, but not sufficient to make it anything but a program feature.

"[4] Upon the film's initial release, some audience members reacted to Number Seventeen with confusion and disappointment.

[3] In the 1966 book Hitchcock/Truffaut, François Truffaut offered a similar verdict, telling Hitchcock that he had found the film "quite funny, but the story was rather confusing."