The Ringer is a 1931 British crime film directed by Walter Forde and starring Patric Curwen, Esmond Knight, John Longden and Carol Goodner.Scotland Yard detectives hunt for a dangerous criminal who has recently returned to England.[1] The film was based on the 1925 Edgar Wallace story The Gaunt Stranger, which is the basis for his play The Ringer.[2] Forde remade the same story in 1938 as The Gaunt Stranger. There was also a silent film of The Ringer in 1928, and a 1952 version starring Donald Wolfit.[3]
It was made at Beaconsfield Studios in Buckinghamshire by Gainsborough Pictures in a co-production with British Lion Films.[4] The film's sets were designed by the art director Norman G. Arnold. The author's son Bryan Edgar Wallace acted as a production manager.
The New York Times wrote, "at the Cameo is a picturization of the late Edgar Wallace's play The Ringer. This film, which hails from England, is the sort of melodrama that provides more amusement than excitement";[5] while in The BFI Companion to Crime, Phil Hardy wrote, "this is the best version of this oft-filmed play...Directed by Forde with a slickness and pace unusual in British films of the period, especially considering the film's stage origins...Hokum, but enjoyable."[6]