The film begins with the head of a girl in close-up... She is very blonde, and her curling hair fills the screen... She is screaming... Cut to a theater sign, announcing a show called "Tonight, Golden Curls." The lights of the sign are reflected in water... From that water the golden-haired girl is drawn out to land... She is no longer screaming... She is dead... Assassinated! <br /><br />That scene was more than the start of a film... It was also the real start of suspense films in England...<br /><br />"The Lodger," based on a novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, was set in a Jack the Ripper-style murder wave in a foggy London... The victims were always blonde girls, always killed on the same day of the week...<br /><br />While the whole capital speculates in contagious fear, a new lodger turned up at a peaceful boarding house... He wears a black cloak and carries a black bag...<br /><br />There are other details which make us mistrust the mysterious tenant without, obviously, conclusive proof So is he or isn't he the serial killer? Well, you have to see the film, and to follow a plot that was to dominate and control several of Hitchcock's later films: the concept of suspicion, the essential point for suspense