The Sleeping Tiger is a 1954 British film noir directed by Joseph Losey and starring Alexis Smith, Dirk Bogarde and Alexander Knox.

It was Losey's first British feature, which he directed under the pseudonym of Victor Hanbury due to being blacklisted in the McCarthy Era.

To avoid being turned over to the police, Clemmons has agreed to stay, acting as a human guinea-pig subject to Esmond's psychoanalysis, which aims to release him from his criminal recidivism.

After a while, Clemmons takes Glenda to the Metro, a hipster nightclub in Soho, where her conflicted attraction to him deepens.

The next day, Glenda admonishes Clemmons for his violent behaviour towards a house-maid, Sally (Patricia McCarron), but their argument ends with a passionate clinch which indicates the beginning of an affair between them.

Sally's fiancé pays Esmond a visit to complain about the abuse she has had to endure from Clemmons and threatens to tell the police.

A cunning ploy, this results in Clemmons pouring out a dramatic account of his tyrannical father, whom he deeply despised.

However, with Esmond's psychiatric experiment over and his patterns of behaviour understood, Clemmons decides to turn himself in to the police.

Due to his alleged ties with the US Communist Party, the blacklisted Joseph Losey moved to London and began work on The Sleeping Tiger, his first British feature film.

The American stars, Alexis Smith and Alexander Knox, were fearful of how appearing in Losey's film would affect their Hollywood careers.