Number Seventeen

This Bulldog Drummond-style yarn about a cop, a femme fatale and a gang of jewel thieves was made on one of Hitchcock's off-days. He didn't think much of the source material, a ropey stage play by Jefferson Farjeon, and he and his collaborators approached the film with their tongues firmly in their cheeks. There are occasional flourishes that testify to the director's ingenuity and ability - Expressionist lighting, faces looming over spiral staircases, hats blown off in the wind - and Hitch throws in plenty of knockabout English humour, but the plotting is half-baked and the special effects are so crude that they make the back projection in Marnie look like the last word in verisimilitude.