A dark and mysterious house, a handcuffed corpse, a stolen necklace, a band of criminals, a prowling detective and a female crook who falls for him: "Although it was taken seriously at the time, Hitchcock intended Number 17 as a spoof of the genre, which accounts for some of its deliberate lapses in logic. Spoof or not, it's an exciting film....The first half displays many echoes of Hitchcock's apprenticeship in Germany, and is fine, atmospheric `old-house' stuff. (In the second half) it launches into a marvelously exciting climactic chase, which is still a most impressive example of editing and imaginative (if extended) use of miniatures" (William K. Everson). "Although the movie seems to be remembered today chiefly for its concluding chase of model bus after model train, before the latter crashes into a model ferry-a sequence which Claude Chabrol and Raymond Durgnat have each aptly compared to Jiri Trnka's puppet films-it is worth noting that Hitchcock handles the entire film like a mechanical toy, a top to be kept spinning at all costs" (Jonathan Rosenbaum).