He was both the Lugosi and the Karloff of the early British cinema, indeed, about the only horror actor going in the United Kingdom in the Thirties and Forties.  He recycled rather musty old plots, skulked in threadbare sets, and often was the only one around him who could actually act.   Yet, so perfect was his portrayal of the murderous villain that his films still have a impact even when viewed today.  You'll see what we mean as we examine...

By JOE WINTERS

Return with us now to the days when melodrama was at its height and the villain of the piece was a laughing, leering, hand-wringing fiend who reveled in his own repugnance. It was Victorian-style theatre, and carrying the torch through the first half of the 20^th century was an actor named Tod Slaughter.

Born in 1885 as Norman Carter Slaughter in Newcastle, England he made his way onto the stage in 1905. Managing his own company within a short time, Tod (aptly named in view of his most famous role) toured the country from town to town in old-time plays casting himself as star villain.

After a brief interruption to serve during the war, Tod Slaughter returned to the stage and finally in 1934 at age 50 into motion pictures. First up, Murder In The Red Barn, the story of the Maria Marten murder of around a hundred years earlier. Tod had played the role of the killer Squire William Corder many times on stage to the delight of provincials out for an affordable evening of thrills and laughter.

The movie, like most Slaughter vehicles that followed, was likewise produced on the cheap, but all this is overshadowed by such juicy dialog as "I promised you’d be bride, and so you shall be…a bride of death!" After killing Maria to avoid scandal, the Squire buries the body in the barn during a raging storm and challenges God himself to "Wake her now…if you can!" Thunder is the reply. Naturally in the end the evil aristocrat is caught and sentenced to death.

Slaughter’s next film role was his best known. As Sweeny Todd, The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (1936), he repeated with his customary gusto the role that had entertained the poor and the well-off many times throughout his stage career. "Beautiful throats…rich and mellow to the razor…I’ve polished them all off." "My special chair, sir, for gentlemen like you who desire an extra polishing off."

With that, a secret lever is pulled, the chair tips back, the wealthy customer is dropped through a trap door to the basement where he’s killed, robbed, and turned over to Sweeny’s partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett. She bakes and sells meat pies. You figure it out. Meanwhile, the barbarous barber sets about the task of forcing his legitimate business partner, who’s fallen on hard times, to persuade his daughter to marry the lecherous Todd.

This became another staple in Slaughter’s films; a beautiful damsel less than half his age and at his less than tender mercies. In the end, though, there’s no honor among thieves, and Sweeny must dispose of Mrs. Lovett and a double-crossing fence before meeting his own well-deserved doom in the blazing barbershop.

The film’s director, Slaughter’s producer George King, specialized in such quota quickies at the time. He made several more of Tod’s pictures, including the next that same year, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke. In the opening segment meant to resemble a staged radio program, Tod would explain to his interviewer that "In my career I’ve murdered hundreds and hundreds of people and came to a sticky end more times than I care to remember. The desire for strong meat is so wide that I am now performing in a new old melodrama."

And thus we segue into our period story of Stephen Hawke casing a house for robbery when he’s caught by an obnoxious child whose spine he promptly snaps (off camera). In spite of this and other crimes, the spine breaker gains our sympathies when he kills the lecherous father of the boyfriend of Hawke’s daughter. After a fall, Hawke dies in his daughter’s arms. Cut back to the present day where Tod Slaughter quietly walks off leaving the interviewer snoring away.

Broad, dark humor played a large part in these films. The Ticket Of Leave Man (1937) was no exception. Tod traded his top hat for a derby bowler as the Tiger, a jewel thief and murderer. "There’s no picking up a gentlemanly livelihood nowadays. Hang me if I haven’t thought of turning respectable," he chuckles. After framing young Bob Briley with forged money and with his sights on Bob’s girlfriend, the Tiger disappears and in his place is white-haired Theopolis Wake, founder of The Good Samaritan Help Society.

Here he accepts huge donations from wealthy patrons upon their deaths, which occur in short order. "We’ll be in for the lot (a hundred-thousand pounds) when she croaks," he declares before sending one of his helpers to frighten one old lady with a weak heart. Eventually Bob, out on ticket of leave, foils the Tiger’s elaborate schemes. The villain then tumbles into an open grave and breaks his neck.

Tod had supporting roles in a couple 1937 non-horror films, Song Of The Road and Darby And Joan. But in It’s Never Too Late To Mend, Tod starred as Squire Meadows, fresh out of church at the film’s beginning and already with an eye on farmer Merton’s daughter, the fair Susan. She’s in love with young George Fielding, so the Squire plots with his banker friend to foreclose on Merton’s farm and bargain for Susan while George is off to Australia to seek his fortune.

Reviewing prisoners with other visiting justices, the Squire explains "It is my hobby." He visits the prison every day and regards the inmates as his children, ("naughty children who must be punished"), as he gleefully takes the cat-o-nine tales to the occasional unlucky convict. George returns just in time to stop the wedding and expose the Squire who goes mad prior to imprisonment, where during hard labor he recalls the Parson’s words which comprise the film’s title.

Loosely based on the book by Charles Reade, the movie masqueraded as an indictment on poor prison conditions and the reforms that came about. Of course, the film was just another showcase for Mr. Slaughter’s brand of theatrics, and that’s where the fun would come in.

Sexton Blake And The Hooded Terror (1938) had a contemporary setting with Tod as wealthy Michael Larron, secretly the Snake, head of the most powerful criminal organization in Europe. On his trail is Sexton Blake of Baker Street! He’s played by George Curzon as a Sherlock Holmes wannabe from a couple previous films. Larron arranges murder by blowgun, dispenses drugged cigars, spies on enemies with "a combination of the camera obscura and the latest television technology" and still (in the Slaughter tradition) lust after Mademoiselle Julie, the young lady friend of his right hand man Max.

After shooting the double-crossing Max, Larron the Snake offers Julie a life of luxury. She spurns him and is sentenced to a room full of (what else?) snakes. A timely rescue by Blake gives Larron time to escape. A pity he never returned, since Tod’s style, a bit more toned down than usual, was well suited for the crime boss role.

He was back in the thick of period melodrama again with 1939’s Face At The Window set in 1880 France where a series of unsolved murders have the country panic stricken. Fantastic stories of Le Loup (a wolf man) and a wave terror inspire this melodrama of the old school, "dear to the hearts of all who unashamedly enjoy either a shudder or a laugh at the heights of villainy." These are what Mr. Slaughter provides as the Chavalier Lucio del Gardo planting knives in the backs of victims while a drooling wolf-like face peers in. Naturally the lecherous aristocrat has plans for yet another young beauty by means of putting the financial squeeze on her father and framing the daughter’s boyfriend for a crime.

The movie combines these typical Tod Slaughter devices with a suggestion of the supernatural and an element of mad science as a corpse is electrically re-animated to reveal the murderer. In the end the Wolf and the Chavalier are carried away by the river Seine to the bottomless ocean. Paris was safe.

Crimes At The Dark House (1940) opens with Tod driving a peg into a sleeping man’s ear and assuming his identity, but Sir Percival Glyde turns out to be a bankrupt heir with debts to pay. While courting a young heiress, he makes time to pursue a pretty housemaid. "Upon my soul, you’re a delightful little baggage." A bit too delightful, as the pregnant girl becomes a nuisance to be disposed of at the old boathouse, thus giving Tod the chance to reprise the "bride of death" line from his first film.

Further complications include a mysterious "woman in white" (the title of the Wilkie Collins novel on which the film is based), some more murders and a scheme to have Glyde’s young wife committed to an asylum. Again, betrayal rears its head and Glyde must kill Dr. Fosco by hanging him from the church bell rope. "You always said you were a teetotaler. Now you’ll have a nice drop." While destroying the parish records that could expose him, however, Glyde dies in his own fire.

At this time, George King moved on to more prestigious film projects while Tod Slaughter dropped out of feature films until 1946’s Curse Of The Wraydons with its usual mix of melodramatic madness, mayhem and murder.

Slaughter rounded out the decade with The Greed Of William Hart (1948), a tale of grave robbers Burke and Hare. Here they’re known as Moore (Henry Oscar) and Hart (Slaughter) so as not to immortalize the real-life criminals. For that reason this is amazingly one of those rare times when a Tod Slaughter film seemed to face trouble with the censor. Other horrific elements remain intact. However unlike earlier films Tod only chases ladies who might serve as dead specimens for Dr. Cox (re-named from the real Dr. Knox). Tod’s a bit older, a bit slower at times but still fun to watch, this time with a brogue and playing drunk in one scene.

Slaughter’s real wife actress Jenny Lynn plays the sloshed Mrs. Moore whom Hart sneeringly refers to at one point as "Sleepin’ Beauty." In the end, the Moores are taken to jail and Hart is left to the mob. If this sounds familiar, its because the plot was repeated in later Burke and Hare movies, most notably The Flesh And The Fiends (1959), directed by John Gilling who did the screenplay for The Greed Of William Hart.

Some work intended for television was edited together as 1952 feature films King Of The Underworld, Murder At The Grange, and Murder At Scotland Yard, all casting Tod as arch criminal Terence Reilly battling retired Yard inspector John Morley (Patrick Barr). Another 1952 film, Ghost For Sale, used footage from Curse Of The Wraydons along with new material featuring Tod as the ghost/narrator Phillip Wraydon.

Still performing his old melodramas on the stage almost to the very end, Tod Slaughter died of coronary thrombosis on February 19, 1956 at age 70.

There were times in his films when Tod would look and nod right at us. A line from Sweeny Todd, "I love my work," seems to sum up the fun, full-blooded approach that Slaughter brought to his performances. While the acting styles of Charles Laughton, Lionel Atwill, Michael Gough and many others were more refined than Tod’s, the ham could surface at any time. As it did then and now whenever scenery-chewing villainy takes center stage, the spirit of Tod Slaughter lives on!

Thanks, Joe.  Tod Slaughter was truly a throwback to the broad villainy and horror of the ha'penny stage, a very "broad" performer who would not have been out of place as the baddie in a "Perils Of Pauline" silent serial.  Yet, he managed to project such an aura of evil and portray such odious and truly chilling menaces that oftentimes he alone made his creaky old horror melodramas quite riveting.  Any true classic horror fan must see at least one Tod Slaughter chiller, in our humble opinion.

Article copyright © Joe Winters

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