Nonureva Really Surprised!

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Leofwine_draca The extraordinarily popular novel THE WOMAN IN WHITE, written in the mid-to-late 19th century by Wilkie Collins, is the basis of this loose adaptation that serves as an opportunity for British horror actor Tod Slaughter to give another barnstorming performance as a moustache-twirling villain. Now, I've read TWIW and studied the novel at university, so I'm pretty familiar with the complex plot. CRIMES AT THE DARK HOUSE tears that plot to shreds. Sure, some of the names are the same, and events do loosely resemble those found in the Collins novel, but don't go in expecting the script to slavishly follow the original storyline. For example, the fire in the church is moved to the film's end, while another major sub-plot is a virtual retread of MURDER IN THE RED BARN! This is melodrama at its best and the most entertaining I've seen of Slaughter's films – in fact, it rivals SWEENEY TODD as his best work! Slaughter is at his hammy best and not a scene goes by when he isn't cackling with mad glee or giving his sinister trademark throaty chuckle. The film begins with him hammering a stake into a poor soul's head (eat your heart out Peter Cushing!) and throughout he commits acts of villainy time and time again. When it comes to the ladies Slaughter is a particular cad here. The script also provides him with great lines, the best of which is undoubtedly "I'll feed your entrails to the pigs!".The supporting cast is pretty decent, especially Hat Petrie playing Dr. Fosco. This slimy professional is such a creep that he almost rivals Slaughter and the ending provides him with a fitting send-off. You can tell that British films had become more Hollywood-ised by his period, as there are moments of comedy (intentional for a change) and even a reel of serial-style punch-ups. Camera-work and music are great and director George King handles the proceedings with aplomb. All in all a great B-movie, one of Slaughter's very best!

wes-connors "A deranged man murders another man in order to assume his identity and take over a recently inherited estate. Soon after arriving at the estate, the psychotic man finds he must continue his murderous tendencies in order to keep his charade from being exposed. As the number of victims increase, along with his deepening madness, it becomes a matter of time before all is revealed and the man's true identity is exposed," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.Thespian Tod Slaughter (posing as Percival Glyde) receives a rude awakening when he discovers the man whose head he hammered to death, "Sir Percival", was penniless. In order to keep the man's estate, he goes ahead with an arranged wedding to pretty Garbo-light Sylvia Marriott (as Laurie Fairlie). After a tearful wedding night, Ms. Marriott tries to distance herself from the repulsive Mr. Slaughter, who is trying to get her to sign over her fortune.When Marriott won't cooperate, Slaughter has her locked in a cell as "The Woman in White", a ghostly apparition seen around the family mansion. Slaughter must also contend with cast members he hasn't been able to murder, like wormy Hay Petrie (as Isidor Fosco). "Crimes in the Dark House" isn't very successful at adapting the Wilkie Collins novel, but it makes a great vehicle for Tod Slaughter - a thoroughly delightful actor in peak performance mode.******* Crimes at the Dark House (1940) George King ~ Tod Slaughter, Sylvia Marriott, Hay Petrie

Terrell-4 Think of a cross between Alan Mowbray and John Barrymore in his last, eyebrow-wagging years and you might have some idea of Tod Slaughter. He was a large, fleshy man with, when he lowered his head, a magnificent double chin. Not a man to hide his hamminess under a cloak of talent, he brought delight to evil with lip-smacking relish in any number of British movies and stage plays. As the false Sir Percival Glyde in Crimes at the Dark House, he brings to mustache-fingering and lascivious chuckling a kind of lovable, horrid fascination. We learn the kind of role Slaughter was noted for when, at the start of Crimes at the Dark House, in the year 1850, he uses a mallet to drive a chisel into the neck of the real Sir Percival, all the while snickering with pleasure. The movie is based, sort of, on Wilkie Collins' grand old Victorian melodrama, The Woman in White. It races by in just 69 minutes, far too fast for us to be bored. Is the movie as bad as some of the acting? Not at all. In fact, like the book, it's quite a page turner, complete with lethal stratagems, a mad woman roaming the grounds of a lonely mansion, one hidden marriage and an unwelcome one, strangled women and cold cells in an insane asylum. Of course, there is love as well as death, and cleansing retribution comes in the engulfing flames of, what else, a family church. Above all, there is the great, hammy performance of Tod Slaughter. He chisels to death the real Sir Percival Glyde in the Australian outback, then assumes Sir Percival's identity when he returns to England to his victim's' ancestral home, Blackwater Park. He expects to find an inheritance of great wealth. Instead he finds nothing but mortgages and debt. Ah, but then he learns Sir Percival and the lovely Laura Fairlie long ago had been pledged to marriage...and Laura will have her own riches when she marries. He also learns that Sir Percival may have married a woman before he left years earlier for Australia, a woman who bore a daughter...a daughter who now is mad and confined to an insane asylum...an insane asylum run by the unctuous and unprincipled Dr. Fosco...the same Dr. Fosco who...you get the idea. Laura Fairlie hates the idea of marriage to this portly, maid-groping, leering degenerate. She has discovered real love with her art tutor, a young man with impeccable upper-class enunciation. Yet she does what her guardian and propriety insist. She weds the false Sir Percival and, with her sister Marion, comes to live at Blackwater. It's not long before the mad girl escapes, Sir Percival and Fosco plan a cruel deception, and Sir Percival chortles his way through three more murders. If this sounds like lip-smacking Victorian melodrama, it is. And it's not bad for, as some critics like to say about popular melodrama, what it is. Crimes at the Dark House is a Tod Slaughter potboiler, but my favorite in the cast is Hay Petrie as Dr. Fosco. He was a very short man and a versatile actor who caught Michael Powell's attention. Petrie played small but notable parts in the Powell/Pressburger movies Contraband, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, A Canterbury Tale and The Red Shoes. He could give a pungent, memorable performance when it was called for. Just watch him in One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing, Contraband and A Canterbury Tale - Criterion Collection. If you're interested in just how good a Victorian melodrama The Woman in White can be when adapted with style, you need to watch the fine, multi-part BBC production from 1997. Marion Fairlie is our narrator, and she takes us into a more restrained but just as dangerous, moody and threatening a world. You'll be impressed, I hope, with Marion's (Tara Fitzgerald) bravery and resourcefulness; you'll sigh along with Laura Fairlie's (Justine Waddell) fears and hopes; be impressed with her tutor's (Andrew Lincoln) steadfast love; loathe Sir Percival's (James Wilby) ruthless caddishness; be fascinated by Count Fosco's (Simon Callow) cruel stratagems and be captivated by the hypochondria of the Fairlie sisters' scene-stealing guardian (Ian Richardson).

todmichel Crimes at the Dark House is really one of my all-time favorites. Not only it's the best adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (by far superior to the latter Hollywood version), but it's also the more perfect of the eight films produced/directed by George King with the great Tod Slaughter. This actor being one of my favorites, I like practically all of his movies, but the fact is that Crimes at the Dark House has better production values, witty dialogue, a better mobility of the camera, and wonderful actors, including the great Hay Petrie as the sinister Count Fosco, head of an insane asylum. The film has priceless value in keeping on film the performance of Slaughter, a really unique comedian, preserving one of his better characterizations. Sure, other titles like The Face at the Window, Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke, and others, must have their partisans - in fact anything with Tod Slaughter is of interest, but Crimes at the Dark House is MY choice. Curiously, did anybody noticed than the print of this movie has no credited director? the British sources (magazines, books, pressbook) credit George King generally, at least a big full-page color ad of the time credits David Macdonald, but the film itself has no director credit!