The Skin Game (1931)/Number Seventeen (1932)/The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

  Well, this was a depressing little film. 

The Hillcrests are a family of rich, landed peers in the English countryside.  Their self-made-man neighbor, Mr. Hornblower (Edmund Gwenn), wants to expand his pottery factory to the land on the other side of the Hillcrests, spoiling their ancestral view.  After a heated auction, the Hillcrests have their investigator (Edward Chapman) dig up as much dirt on the Hornblowers as he can.  He hits paydirt with the daughter-in-law, Chloe (Phyllis Konstam).  Lady Hillcrest (Helen Haye) has no qulams whatsoever about using this damaging piece of blackmail to coerce Hornblower into backing down.  Unfortunately, these secrets have a life of their own.

What's the moral here?  Rich people are dicks.  Don't mess with them.

  This is a much better film than the previous one, in that it didn't make me want to hug a kitten afterwards.  It's one of those nobody is who they say they are kind of films.

A man (John Stuart) sees a light moving around inside a house for rent, Number 17, and goes in to check it out.  He finds a bum (Leon M. Lion) looking for a place to sleep and a dead body.  After running around the house chasing every single noise, they find a girl (Ann Casson) who had climbed over from the house next door.  She's looking for her father, who disappeared from his locked study before she could give him a telegram.  The message contained therein was about a missing necklace that had been traced, with its gang of thieves, to No. 17.  Around this time, the corpse goes missing and several unsavory characters show up.  One of them just might be a detective, however, so tensions continue to run high.

  Probably should have been named "The Family That Knew Too Much" but that's not as catchy.  Also, this is a terrible poster.  It looks like Peter Lorre is Frankenstein's drug-addict cousin.  

While on holiday in the Swiss Alps, the Lawrence family is shocked when their friend (Pierre Fresnay) is killed on the dance floor.  With his dying breath, the friend tells Jill Lawrence (Edna Best) to take his shaving brush to the British embassy.  Her husband Bob (Leslie Banks) gets to the brush ahead of the police but before he can do anything, he receives the now-trite "If you ever want to see your daughter (Nova Pilbeam) alive again, you'll keep your mouth shut" note.  Turns out their friend was a spy and now they have key knowledge of an impending assassination, but should they risk their daughter's life to try and stop it?

People liked this one so much, Hitch rebooted it twenty years later with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day and in color.  That one I have actually seen but not this one.  Also, it's a little weird to see Nova Pilbeam here as a young child when I just saw her last week as the romantic lead in a different Hitchcock film, Young and Innocent.  It's like he walked up to the 15-year-old and said "Come back and see Uncle Alfred when you're legal and he'll make you a star."  /shudder

And THAT, my friends, is the last movie in the Alfred Hitchcock Legacy collection!  Yay!  Now we can begin all the Oscar nonsense.