1940’s Crimes at the Dark Horse is the eighth film Tod Slaughter starred in over a five-year period, and the last to be included in the Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray box set which was my introduction to his work. It seems funny to me that what shocked audiences in 1935 was becoming passe by 1940. So much time has passed since that era that I can’t imagine a difference between those years.
As for myself, I don’t see any change in quality across the span of these films. With the exception of a lame Sherlock Holmes knockoff, they consistently deliver the same product. They even have roughly the same plot. Slaugher is a murderous villain? Check. He wants the heart of a young woman? Check. He will frame that girl’s true love for the crimes he himself has perpetrated? Check and double-check.
After a while, the scripts must have been like Mad Libs. First, designate a time and place—England 1850, in this case. And we’ll need Slaughter to have a line of crime, so we’ll have him steal the identity of a man who has inherited a barony and a vast estate. Tell you what, we’ll even throw in for free a duplicitous asylum operator who thinks he can blackmail Slaughter. As an added bonus, there’s a mistaken identify subplot.
You see, the real baron was married just before leaving for Australia, which is where Slaughter killed the man and stole his signet ring. But our villain didn’t know about that, nor about the daughter that bride gave months to eight months after his departure. That woman (Elsie Wagstaff) is certain the man who has claimed to be the baron is an impersonator. Her daughter, in the meantime, is in the asylum of the greedy doctor played by Hay Petrie, and she harbors murderous resentment towards the father she’s never known. It would be pity if she escaped.
Slaughter has played surprisingly nasty characters in every film I’ve seen him in, but he has even a bit more edge in this final appearance. He warns Petrie, “Betray me, and I’ll feed your entrails to my pigs!” He murders a chambermaid he knocked up, first strangling her and then shoving her corpse under water until it stays submerged. But the crowning insult is he pauses at the door when making his exit, as if to say to the dead girl, “Joke’s on you!”
Another slight advancement from the previous film is a couple of women have a bit more confidence. Hilary Eaves insists on living in the house when Slaughter marries her sister (Sylvia Marriott), but is dismayed to learn how distant her bedroom will be from her sister’s. Marriott has a good moment where she refuses to sign a compromising legal document unless Slaughter lets her read it first. That may sound like something so reasonable it wouldn’t even be up for debate, but that scans as accurate for the time when this film takes place.
With Crime at the Dark House, we bid adieu to Slaughter, and I almost hate to, even if I was finding the recycled plot a tad shopworn by this point. This performer, who is almost completely unknown today, had an interesting angle to his hamminess, the ability to convey an uncomfortable air of genuine menace while chewing the scenery. I never would have suspected Vincent Price of having committed any murders in real life, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if a closer look at the closets of Tod Slaughter would uncover some actual skeletons.
Dir: George King
Starring Tod Slaughter, Sylvia Marriott, Hilary Eaves
Watched as part of the Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray box set The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments, 1935-1940 Blu-ray