Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

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Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Red-Barracuda Ah, you've got to love Tod Slaughter. As far as I can see, this English actor was pretty much forgotten for decades but has now rightfully been rediscovered in large part because of the glories of the internet and public domain DVD collections. It's via these two channels in particular that the great man has now become known to fans of movies from the less seen corners of cinema history. Slaughter made a number of British melodramas back in the day where he played a succession of utterly evil cads whose actions were totally immoral. Slaughter's performances in these movies were always the best things about them and it is only right that he is slowly receiving praise and fans many decades down the line.Crimes at the Dark House is another typical Slaughter offering. In it he plays another nasty bit of work called Sir Henry Glyde, who not only is a serial murderer but who also replaces his wealthy wife with a look-a-like from the local asylum! He begins the story as he means to go on by entering a tent and hammering a spike into a sleeping man's head! He takes on this unfortunate individual's persona and travels to his estate in order to claim his huge inheritance, only to discover a pile of debts instead of a pile of loot. He then coerces a very young wealthy woman to be his bride, in order to ultimately claim her money.This one is essentially business as usual for Slaughter. Again, he is on fine form in another boo! hiss! performance of quality ham. His actions are utterly deplorable of course but he ultimately meets a suitably macabre end which is as it should be. I personally wouldn't put this in the upper bracket of his films; it's more serviceable than especially good. But it's still one that should certainly be seen by any fan of this awesome old school actor!

Scarecrow-88 Devlishly wicked tale of a murderer(the deliciously vile Tod Slaughter)stealing the identity of Percivel Glyde, a man supposedly on the throes of receiving a large castle and possible fortune. What the false Glyde doesn't expect is that the ancestor not only left him the castle, but in a state of massive debt. He is told, however, that his ancestor had arranged a marriage between Percival and Laurie Fairlie(Sylvia Marriott), the daughter of a nobleman who left her in the care of a selfish old disease-phobic uncle, Frederick(David Horne)who is squeamish when anyone challenges him or sneezes around him..he often goes into outrageous fits when Laurie's very vocal, high-strung sister Marion(Hilary Eaves)confronts him on his wrongs and attitudes towards them. But, Laurie, despite being madly in love with "paint-instructor" Paul(Geoffrey Wardwell), agrees to marry Percival, although she's deeply sad regarding the weighted burden of marrying a man she'll never love. The arrangement of marriage could lead to quite a fortune if the false Percival can get Laurie to sign a document turning over her assets to his name. Marion, Laurie's confidant and adviser, however, will always be a thorn in the false Percival's side. Also, weighing on the false Percival's mind is the mother of the real Percival's child, a woman bound in a private asylum, ran by the slimy director Dr. Isidor Fosco(Hay Petrie;playing him as a sly scoundrel, almost as devious a character as the false Percival). He'll have to be rid of the mother, Mrs. Catherick(Elsie Wagstaff)and somehow get rid of a nagging nuisance that develops..the real Percival's daughter, the "woman in white" Anne Catherick(also played by Sylvia Marriott)escapes from the asylum in an unfortunate mishap and begins raising havoc informing Paul that the false Percival only wishes to marry Laurie for her money. And, he has ANOTHER problem he'll have to deal with, a lovely servant girl he soon makes a chambermaid..she's pregnant with the false Percival's child and wants to marry him herself. He contends with all this drama while being blackmailed by Fosco who will keep his lips sealed if the false Percival feeds his pockets with a large sum. Together, the false Percival and Fosco etch out a plan..because Laurie and Anne look almost identical, they could let Anne die of the pneumonia she contacts being out in the open too long and switch her body with Laurie's. They'd lock Laurie away in the asylum with everyone believing her dead using the corpse of Anne as the disguise. Through and through, however, Paul and Marion will not easily sit on their hands when they know deep down inside that the false Percival is indeed not who he he says he is. And, it's only a matter of time before the relationship between two scoundrels, Foscoe and the false Percival will deteriorate.Marvelously twisted black comedy is played with such relish and glee, the flick is intoxicatingly entertaining..if the material suits your tastes. The false Percival, played with such demented joy by a great Tod Slaughter, who cackles with widened eyes as he strangles innocents unfortunate enough to meet him late at night at an isolated boat house. The film is also startlingly adult presenting some pretty disturbing material played to the hilt. I mean, in the opening scene, Slaughter kills the real Percival with hammered stake to the temple of his skull! Despite watching a bad quality print(this terrific film deserves a pristine copy if ever a film deserves one), the film's still atmospherically rich with a very noirish, Gothic, decadent beauty. A must-see for fans of macabre comedies. Not for all tastes.

mark.waltz Wilkie Collin's novel "The Woman in White" has been the subject of two films and an Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical that recently had a brief run on Broadway. It is basically a story of scandal and fraud amongst Europe's upper crust. This is the first film version, made in England during a period that many poverty row studios were making abridged versions of classic novels. Some of these, such as a British version of "Scrooge", are actually pretty good, but most of them, like "Jane Eyre", "Oliver Twist", and "The Scarlet Letter" come off as abridged versions that barely attempt to give any sort of character development. In the case of "The Woman in White", this 69 minute film goes into a little more depth than the ones listed above, but rather than being presented as a representation of the Gothic novel it was based on, it is more of a horror film made to show off the hamminess of its leading man, Tod Slaughter. As the fake Count Percival Glyde, Slaughter takes over the estate of the man he is seen brutally murdering in the first scene of the film. Slaughter sneers and laughs as he goes through his horrific actions to keep control of the status he has achieved through nefarious means. Slaughter is so over the top that he makes Charles Laughton seem subtle in comparison. His acting style is so close to camp that you can't help but laugh every time he commits a horrible crime. In the four films that I have seen of his so far, I felt that his films seem like they were meant for the silent era. His villains all seem so one dimensional of the mustache twirling school of acting. Even Bela Lugosi in his Monogram cheapies showed some underlying motivations for his criminal actions, yet Slaughter's acting is so silly you'd think you were watching a live version of cartoon characters Snidely Whiplash or Boris Badinoff. In that sense, these films are fun to watch because they are so delightfully bad, like an old silent Pearl White serial or an early 20th century stage melodrama. I wonder if Lugosi and Karloff watched these films and toned down their performances based on their reactions to his performance. It is also interesting to note that Slaughter's looks were not transfered over into the recent musical version to his character, but to Michael Crawford's (in London) and Michael Ball's (both in London and on Broadway) character of the comic villain Dr. Fosco (played here by Hay Petrie).I always thought that every Tod Slaughter movie should include that line, "You shall be a bride. A bride of death!". He first used that line on screen in "Murder in the Red Barn" and repeats it here again to a buxom parlor maid. It's sort of like Mel Brooks' constant use of the lines, "Walk this way" and "It's good to be the king!". No Tod Slaughter movie should be complete without it. In the 1940's British cinema made many technical strides that made some of their films seem almost modern in comparison to American films of that era, but many of the films made there in the 1930's seem quite creaky when compared to those made just a few years later. The 1948 Warner Brothers version had more of a Gothic style to its storytelling (and a much higher budget and well known cast), and the musical's filmed background gave the impression that the character's lives were as flat as the setting. It is interesting to have seen this story done by three different perspectives that I wonder how it would work as a film today. I had no idea that the British version of "The Woman in White" had even been made until I purchased it on DVD as part of my ongoing film study. Interesting to note that this is one of two Tod Slaughter films made that were later turned into musicals (the other is "Sweeney Todd", which a revival of ironically opened around the same time as "The Woman in White").

Chris Gaskin The above statement is how I saw the great Todd Slaughter's role in this movie as he laughed every time he killed somebody.He plays somebody who he has just killed and heads for England where he takes up residence in his victim's large and creepy mansion, the residents there not knowing he is a mad impostor. After several deaths, mostly women which he finds funny, a fire at the end claims him after his real identity is discovered.Joining Slaughter in the cast are Sylvia Marriott and Hilary Eaves.Crimes At the Dark House is a must for all old horror fans out there. Excellent.Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.