Irish lass Mary (Maureen O'Hara) arrives on the stormy Cornwall coast to live with her aunt Patience (Marie Ney) at Jamaica Inn, only to discover that the house is a well-known den of thieves and cutthroats led by Patience's brutal husband Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks of The Most Dangerous Game and Went the Day Well?).

Syn books Du Maurier's leading villain originally disguised himself as a man of the cloth as well, a ruse deemed unacceptable by the church-dominated Hollywood Production Code. The story is very much like Russell Thorndyke's popular Dr. Assistant Joan Harrison graduated to credited co-screenwriter on the show, while Hitchcock's wife Alma reportedly touched up the final script. Produced on a lavish budget by Charles Laughton and Erich Pommer and cast with top English talent eager to work with their country's most celebrated film director, Jamaica Inn is an impressive adventure-suspense thriller from a popular novel by Daphne Du Maurier, whose work Hitchcock would adapt twice more. I tried to watch it a wretched print on a public access channel once, and gave up after just a few minutes. Outside of special screenings, it has long been unavailable on any other than terrible Public Domain copies. It feels odd to be reviewing a feature by Alfred Hitchcock as a 'new' item that few people have seen, but that's exactly the case with Entertainment One Film / Cohen Media's amazing new Blu-ray of 1939's Jamaica Inn. Priestley from the novel by Daphne Du Maurier Written by Sidney Gilliat, Joan Harrison, Alma Reville, J.B. Ĭinematography Bernard Knowles, Harry Stradling, Sr. Starring Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Robert Newton, Leslie Banks, Marie Ney, Emlyn Williams, Basil Radford, Mervyn Johns, John Longden. 75th Anniversary Edition / Street Date / 39.98

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