Whitech
It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.
ChanFamous
I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
Brenda
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
mark.waltz
Prior to Snidely Whiplash and Dick Dasterdly, there was Tod Slaughter, the mustache twirling, snickering Englishman who slit throats, shot young ladies whose virginity he stole and buried them in a barn, strangled innocent children, hammered spikes into brains, and here, is a back breaker. At least those cartoon villains didn't get to do that; They were too concerned with tying the heroine to the tracks or stealing state secrets (or a bag of loot) and too insipid to really get away with their crimes. With Tod Slaughter, we know from the moment he appears on the screen that he is the guilty party, and here, he's nasty from the start, breaking the back of a chunky rich kid who demands that he get out of their garden. More enemies follow suit, and in one of the creepiest scenes in a Slaughter film, he's confronted by the alleged ghost of one of his victims, sitting up in the morgue, and scarring the crap out of him. But once his crimes are exposed, he's sent out on the lam, to run through the countryside with the threat of being hunted, only because the person who exposed him is in love with Slaughter's daughter, and doesn't want to see her hurt.In a Slaughter film, the supporting cast never really matters. These barn stormers focused on Slaughter's nefarious laugh coming either before he kills somebody brutally, as he confronts them with their impending doom, and usually after the crime has been committed. Subtlety is never utilized in a Slaughter film, even if he does appear to genuinely be in love with the young heroine or devoted to a daughter, as he seems to be here. These films all have a formula: Introduce Slaughter as the culprit of a crime spree, have him commit a few of those crimes to give the viewer some chills, expose himself (usually by someone he's trying to frame) and the ultimate pay-off which always follows a mad scene. Slaughter gives his all to these types of roles, hysterically over the top. His films, usually directed by independent producer George King, look cheap, and the prints available aren't usually the best. The creakiness of those prints, though, is what makes him stand the test of time, and if his acting method is long dated, the films are fun to watch for their formula, the shear audacity of their ridiculousness, and cartoon like characterizations. When an actor makes Karloff and Lugosi look subtle, that's enough to warrant their place in the camp hall of fame, and if the films themselves are hardly classics, they are a heck of a lot of fun!
chrismartonuk-1
The opening scene plays out like every parents worst nightmare as Tod - casing a large country house - tempts an inquisitive child to See "a paradoxical paradox" and gleefully breaks his spine. This film was made in the immediate aftermath of Sweeney Todd's surprise success across the Atlantic and shows every hint of being custom made to cash in on Tod's newfound success - he is even given a special introduction in the prologue. An original script - as opposed to a musty Victoria melodrama original - it is very much Sweeney Todd-lite as Hawke cracks lines about "getting to grips" whereas the demon barber made grisly puns on "close shaves" and "polishing off". Tod is allowed to be more sympathetic with this being one of his few films were he fails to lust after a girl less than half his age. He is even allowed to protect his girl's honour as he escapes from prison very cleverly and slays the lecherous Miles Archer who openly lusts after her. Instead, he is a proper Father to his "adopted" daughter who is allowed to shed a few tears over him after his fatal fall at the end. The rest of the cast is the usual thin gruel that surrounds Tod, with the sole exception of destined-for-bigger-things Eric Portman who brings as easy an authority to the role of the hero as he did to Carlos the gypsy in Maria Marten - especially in the scene where he - in pursuit of Hawke - makes himself at home in an inn and plants his feet upon the table. The usual black humour is present - one fellow inmate of Tod's in the cell who notes Hawke's strange attitude to imprisonment says "he must be married". The man was not only the cheap and cheerful British quota quickie answer to Boris and Bela but an entire theatrical sub-genre unto himself. Victorian melodrama never had a more stalwart champion.
BaronBl00d
This time around Tod Slaughter plays Mr. Stephen Hawke, a limping, kind-hearted bespectacled money lender by day with a beautiful, faithful daughter and the friendship of a local shipping agent and son, and by night he is the "spine-breaker," cruelest of all killers as he kills the rich for their money and treasure in a serial-like fashion. As with any Slaughter film, Slaughter is the main focal point of the film. The film is barely over an hour in length, but it has much to offer in plot. We have Slaughter kill a spoiled rich kid, trick a man into bringing an emerald to his home, kill his friend, and run from the vengeance of his son. Throw in some lecherous guy that wants to force Hawke's daughter into marriage and a hunchback for extra measure. The rest of the actors are adequate(or less than so) but they do not detract at all from the presence of Slaughter on film. His build, his speech, his whole demeanor brings life to each and every scene he is in. Is he a great actor? No, but he sure can grab your attention and keep a "grip" on it. As with many other Slaughter films, George King directs in workman-like style if nothing else. The beginning is set up like a radio play with some "entertainers" doing some kind of real bad vocal act prior to Slaughter coming on talking about his "new" old melodrama. Good old-fashioned fun!
gavcrimson
You owe it to yourself to see at least one Tod Slaughter film. His signature movie Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street or the career overview Crimes at the Dark House are two of the best examples, but The Crimes of Stephen Hawke is a worthwhile introduction to his work. Like most of the early Slaughter movies it seems uneasy about the (then) new film medium favouring more common forms of entertainment. His debut film Maria Marten or the Murder in the Red Barn opens with the entire cast being introduced like in a play and Crimes opens like a radio show complete with some hard to watch variety acts (singers Flotsom and Jetsom and a `comic' butcher) before Tod Slaughter is brought on to introduce his latest piece of `Strong Meat'. In the subsequent film/ radio play Slaughter (real name: Norman Carter Slaughter) plays the title role, an outwardly respectable moneylender who is really serial killer `The Spinebreaker' nicknamed for his ability to snap his victim's spines. His long time friend Joshua becomes his latest victim, however upon discovering the guilty party Jossua's son seeks revenge, forcing Hawke and his sidekick, an eyepatch wearing, one legged hunchback to flee, leaving Hawke's adopted daughter in the blackmailing hands of an upper class `lecherous brute'. For a film that barely passes the hour mark this manages to cram allot in, including a fake `talking' corpse, Hawke sent to jail for a year (for stealing a loaf of bread!), the obligatory romance, the honest guy vs the slimey rich guy for Hawke's daughter's hand and even some unexpected sensitivity. Its worth noting that the British censors banned all horror films during the WW2 years, although this falls a few years short of the censor's ban, during that time Slaughter was still making `meldrodramas' with tent pegs pounded into heads, human flesh stuffed into meat pies and lines like `I'll feed your entrails to the pigs' that were far more lurid than any banned Hollywood horror movie. Crimes opens to a sadistic scene where a pompous child is attacked by Slaughter and has his back broken, such scenes like that are not common in British movies of the time. Equally don't look for sub-plots about people being tortured with whips in Ealing comedies. Yet Slaughter's performance is incredible, extremely theatrical and barnstorming par excellence. You can almost hear the boos from the audience as he exits a scene giggling and cackling after `coming to grips' with some unfortunate. Some of the berserk expressions he makes in this film as he breaks spines makes it hard to believe he hadn't completely lost his mind. Call it hammy or over the top, but you'll never forget it. The director George King deserves credit for preserving most of Slaughter's body of work on film (even if he doesn't do it very well). Seemingly more comfortable on stage than on film, Slaughter's movies are little more than filmed plays, with cardboard sets, minimal (if any) camera movement, and unexceptional repertory players. Slaughter is the only reason to watch any of his films, for further proof see King's other Slaughter-less films like The Case of the Frightened Lady (1941) the old magic simply isn't there. Tales from Slaughter's theatre days are both hilarious and the stuff of legend. Actresses not needed would dress as nurses (in case anyone died of a heart attack), while Slaughter reviled in the sort of grand guignol butchery that could never be shown on film and would walk around after the show in blood stained clothes. Whether all these tales are true its hard to know. My relatives remember seeing the guy `live' sometime in the Forties and the man himself definitely left an impression running around the audience covered in blood (actually beetroot juice), waving a big knife and offering to `polish people off'. Now dead for nearly half a century, Slaughter's films are the nearest we'll ever come to experiencing such mad genius first hand. Technically the movies should be unwatchable, but they exert a strange fascination that you'll have to see for yourself, there really hasn't been anything like them before or since.
