Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Smoreni Zmaj Out of 16 Hitchcock's movies I saw so far, this one is definitely the worst. Starting from poorly developed and boring story, through uninteresting characters without any characterization, with which it is impossible to identify or at least sympathize, to visual mediocrity. I have absolutely nothing positive to say about this film.3/10

bombersflyup The 39 Steps took a while to hook me in and while it was far fetched at times, it turned out to be a decent film by the end. It didn't however do enough to make me want to re-watch it with renewed interest.A woman comes to Hannay for help. He agrees to hide her in his flat, but in the night she is murdered. How did they kill her in the flat? I'll assume they wanted to pin the murder on Hannay instead of killing him while they were already in the flat. Hannay goes to Scotland to find the man the murdered woman was going to see, but why is he going there? He has no information. Robert Donat was solid in the main role and Madeleine Carroll was terrific. Every scene that took place in the hotel was of a high quality, the film needed more of that magic throughout for me.

gavin6942 A man in London tries to help a counterespionage agent. But when the agent is killed and the man stands accused, he must go on the run to both save himself and also stop a spy ring which is trying to steal top secret information.Of the four major film versions of the novel, Hitchcock's film has been the most acclaimed. In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked it the fourth best British film of the 20th century; In 2004, Total Film named it the 21st greatest British film of all time, and in 2011 named it the second greatest Best Book to Film Adaptation. There is really no denying that Hitchcock's version is best. Who else has even come close. The other honors are a bit harder to understand. This is not even Hitchcock's fourth best film, let alone the fourth best in all of British history...Where Hitchcock's previous film, "The Man Who Knew Too Much", had costs of £40,000, The 39 Steps cost nearly £60,000. Much of the extra money went to the star salaries for Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. This is ironic in retrospect. Few today (2015) know of Carroll or Donat, whereas Peter Lorre went on to become quite famous for his image and voice.

disinterested_spectator It is often said that in old movies, even husbands and wives had to sleep in twin beds, and if both got on the same bed, at least one foot of one person had to be on the floor. Actually, if that was a rule, it was never written down, because it is nowhere to be found in the Production Code. And if it was a rule, it was not followed in this 1935 movie, because an unmarried man and woman get in a double bed and spend the night with all four feet on the bed. Part of the reason may have to do with the fact that the movie was made in the United Kingdom. Maybe their censorship rules were different, and America just went along. Also, it probably helped that the man and woman are antagonistic toward each other, sleeping together only because of handcuffs, so that there is not the slightest suggestion that they will have sex with each other.At the end of the movie, Hannay calls out to Mr. Memory during a performance, asking, "What are the 39 steps?" to which Mr. Memory begins to answer before he is shot, thereby leading to the capture of the man who shot him, who heads the organization of spies. We have to wonder why Mr. Memory started answering the question. We suspect there are two reasons: first, Mr. Memory was a somewhat unwilling participant in the spy ring (blackmail?); and second, his pride in being able to answer any factual question that was put to him made him unable to say, "I don't know."But that started me thinking. This is not the only Hitchcock movie in which a villain blurts out the truth even though in so doing he provides information that could or does lead to his undoing. In "Spellbound" (1945), Constance (Ingrid Bergman) gets her colleague, Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), to help her figure out the meaning of a dream, which he does, thereby incriminating himself. In "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton), the Merry Widow murderer, vehemently expresses his disgust for foolish widows at the dinner table. In "Frenzy" (1972), Blaney (Jon Finch) is being hunted by the police for being the Necktie Strangler. He turns to Rusk (Barry Foster) for help, not realizing that Rusk himself is the Necktie Strangler. While they are talking, Rusk says with a hostile tone in his voice that some of these women who are raped and murdered get exactly what is coming to them, but Blaney is too distracted to notice.And come to think of it, I suppose we all have had moments when we blurted out something incriminating, when we could have simply kept our big mouths shut.