Slaughter

 
Coming off a Dario Argento retrospective, films that are stylish, master crafted and occasionally shocking, I was faced with, another shocker specialist, whose work was none of those things. You Tube fielded a nice, reduced-aperture transfer of Todd Slaughter's 1948 The Greed of William Hart, under its re-issue title Horror Maniacs, a reel longer than the abbreviated version that has been circulating.

English melodrama specialist Tod Slaughter is someone who has been hiding in plain sight for the better part of a century. After down market first runs, his film output never figured in theatrical re-issue or TV, film society or cinémathèque showings. You’d have to engage with sixteen millimeter distribution, VHS or DVD to reach it. There's a thirties Sweeney Todd movie in there. 

Slaughter established himself post WW1 doing blood and thunder pieces with his Elephant and Castle company and  touring regional British theaters. He appears to have made himself the front runner in an established British tradition.  His 1935 Maria Marten: Murder in the Red Barn film was preceded by four movie versions, including a (now of course lost) 1913 Maurice Elvey film shot in the actual Suffolk Red Barn.

Slaughter’s films played to the audiences who had hissed and jeered his characters on stage, as he delivered lines like “I’ve got my eye on yer, William!” or “There’s queer folk about at night.” Mainly directed by the largely forgotten George King, these were mounted functionally on modest budgets and the playing was relatively restrained, without the rib nudging and nods to the audience we see when such work is simulated in later productions.

Tod Slaughter.

Slaughter is sometimes compared to Charles Laughton and it is not hard to imagine either actor being assigned to the other’s roles but, after the relish which Laughton brought to The Island of Dr. Moreau, Jamaica Inn or even The Strange Door,  Slaughter’s avuncular fiends are outclassed. 

The Greed of William Hart is another Body Snatchers film, made in the wake of the 1945 Robert Wise-Val Lewton movie and appearing about the time Dylan Thomas wrote  his “The Doctor and the Devils” script that was finally filmed by Freddie Francis in 1985. William Hart writer John Gilling would return to the subject in the 1960 The Flesh and the Fiends fronted by Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence, this time identifying the historical characters whose descendants had demanded the family names be changed for the Slaughter version. Retooling the sound track to rechristen Burke & Hare as Hart and Moore consumed the funds intended for the film’s music track.

Slaughter’s support cast is headed up by the admirable Henry Oscar (The Four Feathers, On the Night of the Fire, Murder Ahoy.) Oscar is a perfect foil, blending in impeccably without showing up the other cast members, though he deserved better. Presentable juvenile Patrick Addison made only this one film and Slaughter’s wife Jenny Lynn is an imperiled heroine. Director Oswald Mitchell also did The Old Mother Riley films. Confined to the small Bushey Studio, though photographed (there is no D.P. credit on the print) and edited on film, this one has the look and feel of then contemporary early TV drama.  

 The Greed of William Hart - Aubrey Woods, Slaughter and Oscar

Slaughter and Oscar arrive in Swanson’s Tavern, as the mist swirls outside, and angrily reject proprietor Hubert Woodward’s attempts to palm them off with “Yer Highland muck” instead of real Irish whiskey. Conversations reveal that the citizenry are becoming restless about frequent disappearances of locals like one of Slaughter’s hovel tenants. We hear the leads and young Aubrey Woods discuss their business arrangement about delivering boxes to Arnold Bell’s  Doctor Cox.

A drunken woman bar fly is murdered by candle light. No blood - nasty rather than shocking. However, after the doctor has removed the head off screen in his dissection class, it’s impossible to identify the body.  Addison finds tall hat Sergeant Dennis Wyndham reluctant to act without catching the ghouls in the act. There’s another murder and Slaughter is undone, when the body is revealed in the cupboard. An angry mob has gathered.

While vigilante-ism is endorsed in some American films (versions of The Virginian, De Mille’s This Day & Age) their cinema also fields imposing criticisms like They Won’t Forget, Fury and Try and Get Me/The Sound of Fury but it’s hard to find something comparable in British product - Captain Boycott and they do read the Riot Act in Fame is the Spur? Also notice that the privileged class doctor is given a speech about the need to advance science, while his menial associates are motivated by sadism and greed. There’s a lot that’s uncomfortable viewing in British film.

Slaughter’s product lacked the imaginative dimension that made the parallel American “Horror Movies” captivating to successive generations.  However, they do manage creepiness like that found in Edgar Ulmer’s work. The word “evil” was common in the films of the day. Think Gainsborough’s forties costume melodramas, particularly ones by Leslie Arliss. I’d always noticed those as the departure point for Hammer’s Horrors and it’s been pointed out that Slaughter represents an earlier cycle that both feed off. There it is, a straight line through some of the tackiest British filmmaking.  

I’ve been seeing Tod Slaughter films at twenty year intervals. On reflection that’s about the right rate.

Barrie Pattison 2023.