Trailer
Plot summary
Police detective Barton comes to a house in rural England, Number 17, which is marked for sale or rent. Its door is unlocked, so he goes in. Someone carrying a candle is walking about the place, and a dead body is found. The stranger denies the killing. Barton gives his own name as Fordyce, then questions the man about what is in his pockets. The man, who says he is Ben and has no home, goes through the corpse and takes a pistol and handcuffs from it. A woman, Rose Ackroyd, is seen crawling on the roof; she falls through, is revived, and calls out for her father, who is on the roof and, she says, lives next door at Number 15. At half past midnight, three people arrive: Brant, Nora and Henry Doyle.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Number Seventeen (1932)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Alfred Hitchcock returned from the Caribbean with an idea for a film, but John Maxwell told him Walter C. Mycroft had a different project for him: an adaptation of Joseph Farjeon's play Number Seventeen. Hitchcock disliked the project as cliche-ridden and wanted to film John Van Druten's play London Wall instead.
- The film leans heavily on miniature sets, among them a model train, bus and ferry, for its climax.
- Number Seventeen is one of the few Hitchcock thrillers in which the director himself does not appear in a cameo role.
