Crimes at the Dark House *** (1940, Tod Slaughter, Sylvia Marriott, Hilary Eaves) – Classic Movie Review 10,868

Producer-director George King’s luridly melodramatic 1940 British black and white B-movie thriller Crimes at the Dark House gleefully turns the classic 1859 Wilkie Collins mystery novel The Woman in White into another absurdly amusing, over-the-top barnstormer for Tod Slaughter.

Drooling old Tod Slaughter plays The False Percival Glyde, the lascivious and evil madman who murders the wealthy aristocratic Victorian landowner Sir Percival Glyde in the gold fields of Australia and assumes his identity to inherit his estate, the Glyde ancestral home, Blackwater Park, in England.

But it turns out that the estate is heavily in debt, so The False Glyde schemes to marry young and beautiful heiress Laurie Fairlie (Sylvia Marriott) and then, with the connivance of Dr Isidor Fosco (Hay Petrie), he plots to murder his wealthy wife to inherit her fortune and takes in a lookalike escaped from a mental institution to hide his crime. The False Glyde is ready to kill anyone who stands in his way and embarks on a diabolical killing spree.

Also in the cast are Hilary Eaves as Marion Fairlie, Geoffrey Wardwell as Paul Hartwright, Margaret Yarde as Mrs Bullen, Rita Grant as the maid Jessica, David Horne as Frederick Fairlie, Elsie Wagstaff as Mrs Catherick and David Keir as Lawyer Merriman.

Tod Slaughter was born plain Norman Carter Slaughter on 19 March 1885 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.

Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker and Sydney Greenstreet star in the 1948 film of The Woman in White.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,868

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