In "Jamaica Inn"--a rip-roaring melodrama drawn from a Daphne du Maurier potboiler set in 1820s Cornwall--an innocent young orphan (the 19-year-old Maureen O'Hara in her first starring role) arrives at her uncle's remote Cornish inn to find it a den of reprobates given to smuggling, wrecking, and gross overacting. They're all out-hammed, though, by Charles Laughton at his most corseted and outrageously self-indulgent as the local squire to whom O'Hara runs for help. Since his star was also the coproducer, Alfred Hitchcock couldn't do much with the temperamental actor. He contented himself with adding a few characteristic touches--including a spot of bondage (always a Hitchcock favorite)--and slyly sending up the melodramatic absurdities of the plot. "Jamaica Inn" hardly stands high in the Master's canon, but it trundles along divertingly enough. Hitchcock fanatics will have fun comparing it with his two subsequent--and far more accomplished--du Maurier adaptations, "Rebecca" and "The Birds". "--Philip Kemp"