It stars Merle Oberon, George Sanders, and Laird Cregar, features Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and was directed by John Brahm from a screenplay by Barré Lyndon.

So the family is initially blind to Slade's increasingly peculiar behavior, such as turning all portraits of women to face the wall and burning odds and ends in the middle of the night.

He goes backstage afterward, rants that his brother had taken his own life due to a failed association with an actress; and tries to make her his next victim.

[1] The New York Times gave the film a mixed review: "If The Lodger was designed to chill the spine—as indeed it must have been, considering all the mayhem Mr. Cregar is called upon to commit as the mysterious, psychopathic pathologist of the title—then something is wrong with the picture.

"[4] Variety wrote: "With a pat cast, keen direction, and tight scripting, 20th-Fox has an absorbing and, at times, spine-tingling drama".