The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter
The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter
Blu-ray – Region Free
Powerhouse Indicator
1935-1940 / 1.33.1
Starring Tod Slaughter, Eric Portman, Marjorie Taylor
Written by H.F. Maltby, A. R. Rawlinson
Photographed by Hone Glendinning, Ronald Neame
Directed by George King, Milton Rosmer, David MacDonald
In 1934 a young filmmaker named George King jumpstarted his career with the help of Britain’s Cinematograph Films Act. The legislation required theaters to present a select number of British films each year and soon movie houses were overrun with fly by night productions better known as “quota quickies.” These threadbare films usually emulated hits from Warner Bros. and Paramount but King was more original than that, he found his inspiration in the scandalous stage shows favored by working class Londoners.
King hired actors from those same plays to repeat their roles in his own films—they were called The Barnstormers, a stock company who plied their trade in lurid stage plays, the West End equivalent of 42nd Street’s grindhouse shockers; Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, an unappetizing tale of straight razors and meat pies, The Face at the Window, the adventures of a snaggle-toothed Peeping Tom, and Maria Marten or the Murder in the Red Barn, an oft-told story of lost innocence.
When King’s adaptation of Maria Marten appeared in cinemas, its theatrical pedigree was apparent at the start: a curtain rises and the actors are introduced along with the roles they’ll play; the hero, the damsel in distress, and the villain. These were stereotypes so simple that even a seven-year old could grasp their motives, which is why, decades later, Jay Ward and Bill Scott could present the continuing saga of the heroic Dudley Do-Right, the virginal Nell Fenwick, and the blackguard Snidely Whiplash, secure in the knowledge that kids in the audience would be in on the joke.
Maria Marten had its own Snidely Whiplash in the cringing figure of a middle-aged Newcastle man named Tod Slaughter. The movie was the actor’s film debut and he fairly devoured the role—a creature with no impulse control and possessed by an animalistic sex drive, Slaughter was the lip-licking, mustache-twirling picture of avarice and entitlement. It was a character he would repeat for the better part of his 50 year career, and why not—Britains crowded cinemas for a glimpse of his latest outrage. In a rave review for 1939’s The Face at the Window, no less than Grahame Greene described Slaughter as “one of our finest living actors.”
Regardless of Greene’s high-toned appraisal, Slaughter’s rowdy fans loved him best as “Mister Massacre” and contemporary fans are sure to wallow in The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments, 1935-1940, a new Blu ray set celebrating the eight movies Slaughter made with George King. The project acts as a rescue mission of sorts—the brilliant restorations from Powerhouse Indicator give these long-neglected chillers a remarkable luster and Slaughter himself benefits from the glow; long regarded as the preeminent ham of horror cinema, the set establishes Mr. Slaughter as one of the slyest comedians in movie history—that is when he wasn’t snapping someone’s spine or cutting their throats.
Produced by King and directed by Milton Rosmer, 1934’s Maria Marten or the Murder in the Red Barn was based on a real-life tragedy, a story so popular with true-crime aficionados that King’s production would be the fifth version to appear in cinemas. Sophie Stewart plays Maria, a chaste farm girl who made Mary Pickford look like one of Cabaret‘s chorus girls. Slaughter is William Corden, the murderous Romeo who leads Maria down the bridal path only to bury her in the barn. Eric Portman, soon to be a regular in Powell and Pressburger films, plays Maria’s beau and Corden’s eventual hangman (in a Slaughter film, justice is always served, and always ironically).
Though Slaughter’s movies could be as static as a museum exhibit, what their directors lacked in technique they made up for in energetic set-pieces framed by some very capable cinematographers—Maria Marten was photographed by George Stretton whose work is particularly effective during the pivotal murder scene, a slow-boil dance of death Slaughter performs with his unsuspecting victim—Setton’s nightmarish lighting gives the actor a demonic quality worthy of Karloff at his most sinister. Slaughter always looked forward to new victims and it must have been like Christmas morning when he received word of his next role, a bloodthirsty butcher who found stardom on Broadway.
A folk tale about a barber who cuts throats as well as hair, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, gave the insatiable Slaughter a golden opportunity to liquidate a good percentage of the cast (the actor would often brag about the number of souls he snuffed). Stella Rho plays the alarming Mrs Lovatt, the baker who uses Sweeney’s left-overs as her secret ingredient—though King would bow to the British Board of Film Censors and keep all of Slaughter’s slicing and dicing offscreen (the stage play showed Sweeney up to his elbows in blood). This was the first of five films King directed and he was helped immensely by Jack Parker, one of the cameramen who gave 1945’s Dead of Night its haunting atmosphere.
Stephen Hawke was one of Slaughter’s oddest roles, and to prove it he breaks the fourth wall before the movie even begins—he appears alongside a radio announcer to boast about his previous murder sprees and promote his latest thriller, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke. Like the overtly theatrical open to Maria Marten, the radio segment is meant to soften the horrors to come—King and Slaughter were obviously aiming for a kinder, gentler kind of Grand Guignol.
Slaughter plays a loving father who moonlights as a serial killer known as the “spine breaker.” His daughter is played by Marjorie Taylor who makes the first of several appearances in a King production and Eric Portman returns as her knight in shining armor. Once Portman has vanquished his nemesis the movie retreats to the broadcast booth where the announcer has fallen sound asleep next to a bemused Slaughter.
The movie needed all the humor it could muster—in its opening minutes, Hawke uses his back-breaking techniques on a bothersome child, one of the more horrific moments in the King/Slaughter annals. The brilliant Ronald Neame (screenwriter for Lean’s Great Expectations, and producer for his Oliver Twist) contributed the cinematography.
Directed by David MacDonald and written by H.F. Maltby (Hitchcock’s Young and Innocent), 1937’s It’s Never Too Late to Mend is social commentary disguised as a horror movie. Slaughter plays a sadistic squire who has his romantic rival locked in prison while employing draconian methods on other prisoners. The atmosphere is rife with echoes of Oliver Twist and Mark Robson’s Bedlam, and like one of the full-throated readings Dickens performed from his novel, MacDonald does not spare the audience; once again, a child suffers for Slaughter’s depraved amusement. If William Castle was in charge he would have handed out smelling salts along with the usual insurance policies.
Horrific or not, It’s Never Too Late to Mend was one of Slaughter’s bigger hits and picked up by MGM, a quota quickie coup. It was followed by The Ticket of Leave Man with John Warwick as a man wrongly imprisoned for the crimes of a ghoul called “The Tiger.” It was a typical recipe for King and Slaughter but the ingredients were showing their age—for their next collaboration they threw out the formula altogether.
As one of many rivals to Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake was perhaps the most popular knock-off of the supposedly singular detective. Created by Harry Blyth, the pipe-smoking sleuth—who had the audacity to call Baker Street his home—made his debut in 1893 in a “story paper” called the Halfpenny Marvel. George Curzon had already portrayed the detective in two profitable mysteries when he teamed with King and Slaughter for 1938’s Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror.
Directed by King and written by A. R. Rawlinson (Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much), the film is Slaughter’s most lighthearted feature and overflowing with pulp fiction contrivances. Slaughter plays a crime lord who’s converted his home into a sophisticated death trap recalling Karloff’s booby-trapped mansion in The Man They Could Not Hang. David Farrar, the donkey-riding British agent of Black Narcissus, plays a fellow named “Granite Grant” (years later he would would play the detective himself in 1945’s Meet Sexton Blake).
In 1939 Slaughter returned to a role he played on stage in The Face at the Window, the story of a wolf man whose reign of terror parallels a string of bank robberies. Slaughter, once again the upper class monster, plays Chevalier Lucio del Gardo who frames Lucien Cortier, played by John Warwick, so he can lay hands on poor Marjorie Taylor.
The Face at the Window combines the supernatural with science fiction in a crazy quilt plot that might be compared to Universal’s nutty The Strange Case of Dr. Rx., but that was it for science fiction and Slaughter, he returned to gothic horror in 1940’s Crimes at the Dark House, a loose remake of Wilke Collins’ romantic mystery, The Woman in White. Slaughter opens the show in most unromantic fashion by driving a stake into his sleeping victim’s ear before assuming the dead man’s identity and sailing back to England to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.
Slaughter’s film career waned in the early ’50s so he returned to the stage and occasionally guest-starred in television—he made his last film appearance in a multi-part episode of the British TV series, Inspector Morley, Late of Scotland Yard. In 1956 he passed away, not long after performing in yet another production of Maria Marten.
Movie fans who discovered Slaughter’s work through atrocious VHS and dvd releases will be stunned by their appearance on the Powerhouse set. Boasting deep shadow play and superb detail, these are restorations that can stand alongside the Universal classic horror sets from 2016.
The films are presented on four discs with two films per disc. Powerhouse has ladled on the extras and just a few of the highlights include new audio commentaries from film historians Josephine Botting, Vic Pratt, Stephen Jones, and Kim Newman, original 78rpm recordings of Maria Marten and Sweeney Todd, original promotional films for Sweeney Todd (some featuring unique appearances from Slaughter) and Slaughter’s last film appearance in 1954’s Puzzle Corner Number Fourteen. There’s also an abundance of interviews, publicity materials and image galleries.
The complete rundown can be found at the Powerhouse site here.
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