New review: Crimes At The Dark House
Our first crime… that it’s taken so long for Tod Slaughter to appear on this site. And if you, like me a week ago, are asking “Who is Tod Slaughter?”, you’re in for the same treat I had on my first viewing of Crimes At The Dark House.
Yes, it may be a short, 1940s Victorian melodrama (based on Wilkie Collins’ The Woman In White, no less) with all the subtlety of a tent peg in the ear.
But it’s also an opportunity for its star to absolutely own every scene he’s in, in all his moustache-twiddling, throat-crushing, over-reacting-to-the-slightest-provocation glory.
The man is absolutely terrifying as the imposter who wastes no time in bedding the servants, forcing himself on his young wife and murdering anyone (and I mean anyone) who he thinks is getting in his way.
He’s such an archetypal villain, of the “woo-ha-ha-ha-haaa, I shall have my wicked way with her and steal her fortune to boot!” variety, and yet I for one have never seen this done before as a ”thing”, only as referenced in a million pastiches. So seeing it played as it was intended, by someone who (for a brief time) was the go-to baddie in British horror, has been delightfully refreshing.
Rest assured, my friends, I will be searching out more of Mr Slaughter’s brief oeuvre…
