Stranger in the House (U.S. title: Cop-Out ) is a 1967 crime film directed by Pierre Rouve and starring James Mason, Geraldine Chaplin and Bobby Darin.

He has become an alcoholic, his wife has left him, his sister is ashamed of him, while his daughter Angela, who still lives in his increasingly shabby large house, despises him.

After looking in at a beat club, where evil teenagers are seen to be smoking pot, we move on to find faded recluse James Mason, whisky bottle at his elbow, old gramophone record on the turntable, musing over his youthful misdemeanours ("Yes, thanks to me they hanged him") in glistening white flashback.

Enter Geraldine Chaplin, close-cropped and clad all in white, observing that Winchester is low on the high life, but soon to have her eyes opened by jaunty sailor Bobby Darin, whose vocabulary may be limited to "Ain't that so?"

His deliciously wicked performance (nonchalantly playing with paper-clips in the courtroom, launching into a lengthy reading from Crime and Punishment to clinch his case) seems to belong to quite another movie.

Georges Simenon's novel makes an uneasy transfer to sleepy Hampshire, but reliable British performers are worth picking out in small parts.