(1935)
Dir - Milton Rosmer
Overall: MEH
One of a handful of low-budgeted British melodramas from the 1930s that tiptoed around unwholesome and/or horror elements, Murder in the Red Barn, (Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn), also features another villainous portrayal from character actor Tod Slaughter. We get plenty of gypsy prejudice, some town gossip, women bellowing their schmaltzy line-readings, men gruffly hemming and hawing their schmaltzy line-readings while rolling their Rs, an angry mob, and Slaughter being an unwholesome fellow with a murderous shimmer in his eye as he creepily tries to charm his way around society until getting busted and letting his full mania come to the forefront. The story by screenwriter Randall Faye was based on the actual 1827 Red Barn Murder, sensationalizing the details while making up plenty of its own. Stuffy, talky, dated, and directed with no sense of style by Milton Rosmer, (an actor himself who had worked steadily in England since the silent era), at least the film poster has some bats and spiderwebs on it to falsely make it look like a haunted house movie. Such spooky aesthetics maybe would have been more interesting, but at least Slaughter was allowed to bring his A-game.
(1936)
Dir - George King
Overall: MEH
The third screen adaptation of George Dibdin-Pitt's stage play that was based on the penny dreadful character and urban legend of Sweeney Todd, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street features one of several madman performances from character actor Tod Slaughter, an appropriate surname if ever there was one. As the title villain, Slaughter gleams, smirks, cackles, and rubs his hands together menacingly, chewing the scenery with a charming yet off-putting glee that gives this otherwise poorly-budgeted melodrama some juice. Obviously, British censors in 1936 were hardly going to allow Slaughter to slice and dice his victims and them have the bodies turned into meat pies by his neighbor, (at least on screen that is), but director George King dances around the gruesomeness so that even those who are unfamiliar with the source material can get the idea. Slaughter's performance is the biggest contributor to this fact since it is impossible to mistake his fiendish greed and mannerisms as anything but unwholesome. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie and its characters are uninteresting and slow things down too much, plus King's direction is flat and lacking in atmosphere.
(1939)
Dir - George King
Overall: MEH
Director George King and actor Tod Slaughter join forces again with The Face at the Window; the third filmed adaptation of F. Brooke Warren's 1897 stage play of the same name. Both King and Slaughter are historically important as being one of the earliest British cinematic teams to work within arm's reach of the horror genre, their handful of pairings paving the way in some respects to Hammer's later works with director Terence Fisher and stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The story here is more straight horror than most from the era and country, with a mysterious "wolf man" appearing in people's windows, a string of murders taking place in 1880 Paris, France, and of course Slaughter hamming it up as a vile rich guy who goes to excessive lengths to frame the poor bank clerk that is in love with his object of affection. The closing moments are where it kicks into gear, with Slaughter's scheme being unmasked so that he can openly threaten everyone while manically laughing, culminating in the wolf window monster grabbing him from a cage. As is usually the case with Slaughter's filmography though, he is the only memorable aspect here with everyone else blandly delivering their lines and King merely doing a passable job from behind the lens.
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