A dreadful Alfred Hitchcock film, perhaps one of his very weakest. Just before leaving England for Hollywood to shoot "Rebecca", Hitchcock squeezed into his schedule this windswept adventure for Charles Laughton's Mayflower Films. Based on a novel set on the Cornish coast by Daphne Du Maurier, the same author and setting as "Rebecca", Laughton plays a decadent, deceitful nobleman who shelters a young orphaned woman from a band of cutthroats living down the road; seems these land pirates are in league with a not-so-mysterious benefactor to sabotage the ships attempting to port, ransacking their vessels and killing everyone on board. Laughton, made up and dressed to resemble a baroque clown, seems to be having a good time, but all his leering and over-affectation is used for little purpose here--his character simply doesn't make any sense. Laughton's real-life discovery Maureen O'Hara has her first major movie role here, and she's posed prettily and is amusingly irate throughout. The climax is elaborately staged and exciting, with Hitchcock finally shaking off the cobwebs and giving us some of his trademark shock effects, and Harry Stradling's cinematography is first-rate. Otherwise this busy, boring drama never finds an appropriate tone or style. *1/2 from ****