"The Lodger is based on the story of Jack the Ripper already filmed by Hitchcock in the silent period: in this version, and in the fine performance of Laird Cregar, he becomes a fat, liquid-eyed Bible-quoting doctor with a manic hatred of women, who goes down to the Thames at night to bathe his bloodstained hands in its dark waters.... (This) is a film of breathtaking intensity and skill. The murders are suggested rather than shown.... After each killing, the director and cameraman (Lucien Ballard) create fantastic chiaroscuro effects of fog, flashing torches, mounted police galloping through the streets.... When he is at last trapped in the flies of a theater, Laird Cregar brilliantly suggests the tension, agony and fear of the character, a huge animal dodging like the Phantom of the Opera through a spider's web of steel ladders." Charles Higham, Joel Greenberg, Hollywood in the Forties