 Lowndes' story had previously been filmed in 1927 as a silent film, "", directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and with sound in 1932 as "The Lodger".It was remade again in 1953 as "Man in the Attic", starring Jack Palance, and again in 2009 by David Ondaatje.Slade, a serial killer, is a lodger in a 19th-century family's London home.