. . . so many of whom are wailing here about being cheated out of "their" preferred Hitch. They demand better suspense! wimpier blonder heroines! a better century! Honestly, folks, Baskin-Robbins can have 31 flavors of ice cream, but Alfred Hitchcock can't have more than one flavor of suspense? <br /><br />I liked this movie. It's not a thriller, and surely not for the kiddies. It is a multi-character study of depth (and, I'll admit, predictability). Not all the considerable bondage involves ropes and scarves; most of it's social -- painful, constraining, and unattackable as a knot behind one's back. This is, for me, Laughton's creepiest role ever, and that's saying something. He was actually hard to look at. (Am I the only one who got subtle hints that his galloping madness owed something to syphilis?) Almost everyone in the cast contributes some glint of acting genius or gravitas to this Gothic tale of moral choice and social submission. In addition to O'Hara and Newton, who are both outstanding, I have to single out Marie Ney (Aunt Patience), in a role they don't write for women of any age any more, and Horace Hodges (Chadwick, the butler), whose eloquent silence closes out this fine movie.