375-379 The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter

[MichaelB]

THE CRIMINAL ACTS OF TOD SLAUGHTER: EIGHT BLOOD-AND-THUNDER ENTERTAINMENTS, 1935-1940

• MARIA MARTEN, OR THE MURDER IN THE RED BARN (Milton Rosmer, 1935)
• SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (George King, 1936)
• THE CRIMES OF STEPHEN HAWKE (George King, 1936)
• IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND (David MacDonald, 1937)
• THE TICKET OF LEAVE MAN (George King, 1937)
• SEXTON BLAKE AND THE HOODED TERROR (George King, 1938)
• THE FACE AT THE WINDOW (George King, 1939)
• CRIMES AT THE DARK HOUSE (George King, 1940)

Release date: 20 November 2023
Limited Edition Blu-ray Box Set (World and UK Blu-ray premieres)

Pre-order the UK edition here
Pre-order the US edition here

The terrifying talents of Newcastle’s Norman Carter ‘Tod’ Slaughter – the first true icon of British horror cinema – are showcased in this long-overdue box set. Featuring the eight films which ‘Europe’s Horror Man’ made in collaboration with British producer-director George King (Tomorrow We Live), this comprehensive collection also includes a number of rare shorts and newsreel items.

Unlike his contemporaries, such as Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton, Tod Slaughter never left his native shores. Instead, he chose to make his mark in Britain by transferring his most sensational theatrical performances to the screen. Portraying every kind of cruel and cunning criminal – from petty thief to mass murderer – he became the first great villain of British horror, at a time before the Grand Guignol of Hammer Films began to take hold, without once donning monster make-up.

Criminally overlooked by film historians, and only previously seen in compromised versions, these fascinating films have been newly restored using original film materials preserved at the BFI National Archive, and are accompanied by an array of essential contextualising extras, including archival short films and radio plays presented with optional soundtracks by British music legends Current 93, newly recorded commentaries, critical appreciations and personal recollections, and a 120-page book. Strictly limited to 6,000 individually numbered units for the UK and US.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION 4 x BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K restorations of Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke, It’s Never Too Late to Mend, The Ticket of Leave Man, and Crimes at the Dark House from original 35mm nitrate negative elements
• 2K restoration of Sexton Blake and The Hooded Terror from a 35mm dupe positive
• HD remaster of The Face at the Window
• Original mono soundtracks
• Audio commentary with film historians Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt on Maria Marten, or Murder in the Red Barn (2023)
• Audio commentary with critics and authors Stephen Jones and Kim Newman on Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2023)
• Audio commentary with critics and authors David McGillivray and Kim Newman on The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (2023)
• Audio commentary with film historian Josephine Botting and podcaster Dave Thomas on The Ticket of Leave Man (2023)
• Audio commentary with critics and authors Stephen Jones and Kim Newman on Sexton Blake and The Hooded Terror (2023)
• Audio commentary with film historians Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby on The Face at the Window (2023)
• Audio commentary with film historians Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby on Crimes at the Dark House (2023)
• New interviews with Imogen Slaughter, great-niece of Tod Slaughter, and her father Giles, in which they discuss their famous relative’s life off stage and off camera (2023)
• New interview with artist and illustrator Ania Goszczyńska and Current 93 channeller and trance scribbler David Tibet, in which the pair delve into their long-term obsession with the life and work of the first British villain (2023)
• Stephen Thrower on Tod Slaughter (2023): the author and musician dissects the great actor’s multiple villainous incarnations
• The Tod Slaughter Repertory Company (2023): video essay on the regular players from Slaughter’s feature films
• Maria Marten and Sweeney Todd radio plays (1932): newly remastered from original 78 rpm shellac discs, these original recordings are presented with optional, newly recorded Current 93 scores
• London After Dark (1926): first known film footage of Slaughter, captured on stage at the Elephant and Castle Theatre, presented with optional, newly recorded Current 93 score
• Tod Slaughter at Home (1936): mock interview with Sweeney Todd, recorded for the Pathétone newsreel
• Pots of Plots (1938): short film in which Slaughter, sitting at the make-up station in his dressing room, reprises three of his infamous villainous roles, including Sweeney Todd
• Bothered by a Beard (1946): humorous short educational film which traces the history of shaving, featuring a scene in Sweeney Todd’s infamous barber shop
• Puzzle Corner No. 14 (1954): Slaughter’s last appearance on camera, delivering a Sweeney Todd monologue
• Image galleries: promotional and publicity material for all eight films
• The Crimes of Stephen Hawke original treatment gallery
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Limited edition exclusive 120-page book with new essays by Jean-Claude Michael, Ania Goszczyńska and David Tibet, Doug Young and Kip-Xool, excerpts from Slaughter’s unpublished memoirs, archival essays and reviews, and film credits
• World and UK premieres on Blu-ray
• Limited edition box set of 6,000 numbered units for the UK and US

All extras subject to change

#PHILE375B
BBFC cert: PG
REGION FREE
EAN: 5060697922073

[Peacock]

Wow, what an incredible set! And right up Kim Newman’s alley!

I’m not sure I’ve even heard of Tod Slaughter before, let alone these films. Any recommendations those that have?

[Finch]

There are (unsurprisingly low quality) uploads of at least two of the films on Youtube.

[Dr Amicus]

The only of these I've seen, and this would be a LONG time ago, is Sexton Blake which passed a Saturday afternoon quite pleasantly (I think I'd seen a Sexton Blake TV series as a kid and thought this might be more of the same). I've been wanting to see these for years, ever since reading Andy Boot's book on British Horror, Fragments of Fear, which has a chapter on Slaughter (the book is reasonably comprehensive, but plagued with errors and far less impressive than Jonathan Rigby's English Gothic). I gather these are mostly theatrical melodramas - perhaps the ancestor of both Gainsborough and Hammer?

[reaky]

Think a Victorian moustache-twirler tying a young lady to a train track, or perhaps Dick Dastardly: Tod Slaughter does not underplay, a habit of his theatrical background. These films are flatly-shot, but as you say, the antecedents to Gainsborough’s and Hammer’s work, and unmissable for lovers of those.

[swo17]

These films rule. Face at the Window, which Kino already put out on Blu-ray, is a good entry point

[Jonathan S]

I’m not sure I’ve even heard of Tod Slaughter before, let alone these films. Any recommendations those that have?

Although Sweeney Todd was (almost literally) his signature role, the consensus certainly used to be that the last two entries The Face at the Window (admired by Graham Greene) and Crimes at the Dark House work best as films. (Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror is I think the weakest and least typical.) I doubt anyone has ever regarded director George King as among cinema's royalty and, compared to the slickest contemporaneous Hollywood product, they're all quite clunky and stagy but that's part of their self-parodic charm.

Tod himself is certainly the main attraction and I think most people either love him (like me) or loathe him. In the context of the mostly anodyne British cinema of the 1930s, he's always seemed to me a subversive force, together with Will Hay (whose best films - also from the second half of that decade - have never to my knowledge been issued on Blu-ray or even first-rate DVDs)...

[colinr0380]

Fantastic news. These films all used to get constant late night showings (as in tucked away at 1 or 2 a.m.) every year on Channel 4 throughout the mid-1990s, but the last time all of these films showed in a Tod Slaughter season on UK television was back in 1998 and they never transferred over onto Film4 when that channel started up later that same year. It will be great to get a chance to see all of these again. I remember them being a fun mix of British music hall clashing with French grand guignol.

[Mr. Deltoid]

Fantastic news. These films all used to get constant late night showings (as in tucked away at 1 or 2 a.m.) every year on Channel 4 throughout the mid-1990s, but the last time all of these films showed in a Tod Slaughter season on UK television was back in 1998 and they never transferred over onto Film4 when that channel started up later that same year. It will be great to get a chance to see all of these again. I remember them being a fun mix of British music hall clashing with French grand guignol.

God, I miss them days. I remember Channel 4 programming Crimes at the Dark House as the last of a triple-bill sometime around then ('97/'98-ish?), preceeded by Wolfen and Tod Browning's Freaks, which I'm pretty sure was billed as the then UK premiere of that once-banned title! It was one of them Long Player tapes and I managed to record all three. Obviously the Tod Browning was the draw for me at the time, but I remember having a great time with Crimes at the Dark House upon my many re-watches. If I remember rightly, it starts with our Tod impaling a man in the head with a spike!

[MichaelB]

Freaks was shown in a double bill with L’Age d’Or at some point in the 1980s - from memory, I’d say 1983 or 1984. It's unlikely to have been much later as I had a VCR in 1985, and there’s no way I’d have failed to tape those two!

And Crimes at the Dark House does indeed begin - it's literally the opening scene - with Tod Slaughter hammering a spike into a man's head through his ear while cackling maniacally, prior to stealing his identity and going back to Blighty to claim "his" inheritance.

But that's not even the most extreme Tod Slaughter opening - in the truly startling The Crimes of Stephen Hawke,

SpoilerShow

he's casing the grounds of a mansion with the clear intent of committing some crime or other, before he's accosted by what must honestly be the most repulsively pompous and overbearingly posh child in British film history. And just when you're thinking "Christ, we're not supposed to sympathise with this creature, are we?", we cut to the child's dead body being found in the grounds, his spine snapped in two.

Because the great thing about films like this is that while they were certainly made to conform to a production code (the British Board of Film Censors was so strict that they wouldn't even allow Sweeney Todd to spell out what Mrs Lovatt's meat pies were made of, although even the most truly innocent maiden aunt can probably work it out from the evidence), they weren't bound by the Production Code, and so they sometimes go off in fascinatingly outré directions that wouldn't have been allowed in American films of the time.

See also the much later No Orchids For Miss Blandish, an imitation of a hard-boiled American thriller that pushed the sex'n'violence envelope much further than a studio picture of the time could possibly have got away with, either because the film's British makers didn't know any better or because they were fully aware of this comparative freedom and took gleeful advantage.. Unsurprisingly, it was absolutely cut to ribbons when it crossed the Atlantic - sadly, I haven't been able to see that version, but I can't imagine there was much of the best bits left.

[Jonathan S]

Yes, Channel 4 (and ITV) film buyer Leslie Halliwell, seated I recall at an editing bench, introduced that broadcast of Freaks as part of a season devoted to banned, censored or censor-baiting films (which also included No Orchids for Miss Blandish). I'm pretty sure it was 1983. I did manage to record it though I doubt I still have the tape.

[Rayon Vert]

This looks like a lot of fun. Another customer here for Indicator! They keep battling and overcoming my will to not buy new discs for a while...

[jlnight]

SpoilerShow

What the Censor Saw (Channel 4)

09/09/83 - Freaks/L'Age D'Or
16/09/83 - The Public Enemy
23/09/83 - I'm No Angel
30/09/83 - Angels With Dirty Faces

07/10/83 - The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek
14/10/83 - No Orchids For Miss Blandish
21/10/83 - The Moon Is Blue
28/10/83 - The Wild One

11/11/83 - The Man With The Golden Arm
18/11/83 - Saturday Night And Sunday Morning
25/11/83 - The Killing Of Sister George

02/12/83 - Carnal Knowledge
09/12/83 - Repulsion
16/12/83 - Nosferatu The Vampyre

Back on thread, I've seen the first two and the last two Slaughter films (on London Live). Sweeney Todd is probably the pick of them but he's so villainous in the others you almost want him to get away with it.

[colinr0380]

Fantastic news. These films all used to get constant late night showings (as in tucked away at 1 or 2 a.m.) every year on Channel 4 throughout the mid-1990s, but the last time all of these films showed in a Tod Slaughter season on UK television was back in 1998 and they never transferred over onto Film4 when that channel started up later that same year. It will be great to get a chance to see all of these again. I remember them being a fun mix of British music hall clashing with French grand guignol.

God, I miss them days. I remember Channel 4 programming Crimes at the Dark House as the last of a triple-bill sometime around then ('97/'98-ish?), preceeded by Wolfen and Tod Browning's Freaks, which I'm pretty sure was billed as the then UK premiere of that once-banned title!

27th March 1998 was the date of that triple bill. Annoyingly I only managed to record Wolfen and Freaks before my tape ran out (both of which I have bought on DVD in the years since) and cut out in the middle of Crimes at the Dark House, so it has only taken a quarter of a century to remedy that situation!

(While Freaks has not turned up on UK television since that screening, Channel 4 did show the 1967 exploitation 'remake' She-Freak twice in 1999 as part of their Exploitica season!)

[Finch]

Indicator posted this still on imgur:

[MichaelB]

For context, that's taken directly from the master for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, so accurately reflects the kind of picture quality that you can expect across the set (aside from Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror, whose surviving materials are at least a generation down, but even that looks infinitely better than it did before).

[therewillbeblus]

Stunning

[therewillbeblus]

These films rule. Face at the Window, which Kino already put out on Blu-ray, is a good entry point

I thought this was okay, but underwhelmingly tame until the last five minutes delivered a delicious left-turn of eccentric histrionics, complete with movements through creative art direction and agile reveals burning rubber til the final frames. I wished the rest of the film had more of that unpredictable spontaneity in it. Is this film's ratio of 'restraint to expectedly programmatic narrative steps/off-the-rails mayhem' a good barometer for the set, or do some of the other films contain more of that condensed insanity dispersed throughout?

[swo17]

I haven't seen these in years so I can't remember specifics, but I want to say give Crimes at the Dark House a chance to see if it's more what you're looking for. All these films are pretty short and modestly budgeted. Perhaps I have more patience for their shortcomings than others will. But I love them.

Speaking of Crimes at the Dark House, I see Indicator have credited David MacDonald as director for this film, but everywhere else I look seems to credit George King instead. Who has this right?

[therewillbeblus]

I thought it was a nice comfort-film, which is not to sell it short. I'm also not expecting something out of the Mexico Macabre set, just a bit more of the tone from the unhinged pitch in ratio to the long windup. I'll keep sampling

[jlnight]

Speaking of Crimes at the Dark House, I see Indicator have credited David MacDonald as director for this film, but everywhere else I look seems to credit George King instead. Who has this right?

According to a Nov 1939 article in Kinematograph Weekly, MacDonald deputised for George King after he "went down with influenza". Apparently it was a "thank you" to King for giving him one of his first opportunities as a director. One of the earliest listings of the film in early 1940 has MacDonald credited as director, but everywhere else has King credited.

[MichaelB]

This is also discussed in the commentary, if I remember rightly, and of course the source may even have been that same article!

(As you'd expect from Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons' by now well-established partnership, the research is exhaustive and impeccable.)

[swo17]

Interesting, thanks. But now I'm also noticing that the first post of this thread disagrees with Indicator's website and credits King. Did one of these recently change?

[MichaelB]

Mondo Digital, with lots of screencaps:

Anyone familiar with the decades of TV broadcasts, streaming versions, and home video releases of both films will be stunned and delighted by their presentations here, with new 2K restorations from 4K scans of the original 35mm nitrate negative elements truly making these feel like different and vastly superior productions. The detail levels, inky blacks, and radically improved sound (LPCM 1.0 English mono with welcome English SDH subtitles) all make these great fun to watch, and even those who dismissed them in the past would be wise to give them another shot under these conditions.

[MichaelB]

The Criminal Acts of Tod Beaver.