A British couple on holiday in St. Moritz become the unwitting pawns in an international espionage plot when they are handed a message from a dying Secret Service Agent. Their daughter is kidnapped and taken to London by terrorists whose plot to assassinate a visiting diplomat, and presumably create another war, is now known only by the unlucky family. Hitchcock makes brilliant use of the Albert Hall, Nova Pilbeam ("such a precocious little brat that one almost feels that the kidnapping will knock a little sense into her" --William K. Everson), and Peter Lorre, the smiling villain. Shorter, tauter, more nightmarish in black and white (more black than white) than Hitchcock's 1955 Technicolor remake with Doris Day and James Stewart, the 1934 version was nevertheless called by Hitchcock himself the work of a talented amateur, the remake that of a professional.