Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Leon M. Lion, Anne Grey, John Stuart
When you think of Alfred Hitchcock, do you think of wacky comedies? No? Well, there’s a DAMN GOOD REASON for that. Number Seventeen is just such a thing, and it’s awwwwwful.
Several random people show up to an abandoned house at roughly the same time thanks to little notes they got. They all find themselves wrapped up in murder and the theft of a precious necklace! That’s the sort of Hitchcockian synopsis you like, right? Okay, good.
The reality of the thing is that this isn’t a serious movie at all. It’s got a lot of Ritz Brothers-style gags and some hilariously poor fight scenes. It certainly doesn’t help that the standard at the time was to show fight scenes all sped up (for some reason I just plain can’t fathom), which just makes them look even more ridiculous.
So yeah, don’t believe IMDb and probably every other revisionist movie site that’ll classify this as a thriller crime drama or something. It’s just a bad comedic version of that. Don’t waste your time.
Films in Boxes 
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