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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 28 |
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THE LEGACY OF TOD SLAUGHTER
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He was the king of all
scenery-chewing actors
of TheColumnists.com
There was a time when I sincerely thought Vincent Price was the movies' all-time scenery-chewer. But that was before I saw my first Tod Slaughter picture.
Tod Slaughter, who died half a century ago in 1956, chewed more scenery in his dozen or so movies than poor Vinnie Price could have gobbled had he lived another half century. When he died in harness, playing one of his famous screen villains on stage in London, Slaughter must have stood in at least four or five cubic tons of sawdust and splinters from all his termite work on scenery.
Okay. Guess I'd better explain what I'm talking about to those of you who don't read a lotr of film criticism. If you're an actor, they say you're "chewing the scenery" if you ham it up in such grand style that it looks as if you're about to bite great chunks out of the set decor on the soundstage where you're being filmed.
A classic moment comes in the opening sequence of "Crimes At the Dark House," the 1940 British film version of the mystery classic "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins. Tod Slaughter is playing a villainous Australian who plans to murder visiting English blueblood Sir Percival Glyde, then assume his identity and go back to England a rich man.
So, we watch as Slaughter places a spike at the back of the unwary Sir Percival's skull, th;en pounds on it with a large mallet. Presto! Sir Percy is dead.
At which point, Slaughter looks around and actually says, "Heh, heh, heh!"
That, my friends, is scenery chewing ala king.
Already a veteran stage villain of the Oil Can Harry variety when he began to make movies in the 1930s, Slaughter never gave up the broad acting style he used on stage, bellowing his lines so he might be heard at the back of the theater and using very BIG gestures that even blind men in the balcony could see on stage.
Later in the movie, Slaughter cautions his crime partner, Count Fosco (Hay Petrie), against making any slip-ups as they conspire to 1.) force lovely young heiress Laura Fairlie (Sylvia Marriott) to marry Sir Percival; 2.) murder Laura's exact double, an escaped lunatic from a nearby asylum, and pass the dead body off as the real Laura; then 3.) drug Laura and send her to the insane asylum as the escaped lunatic.
"Fail and I'll feed your entrails to the pigs," Slaughter tells Count Fosco, chuckling all the time.
Slaughter was a huge man, built along the lines of a grizzly bear, so we're expected to grow quite ill when he approaches the fair young Laura on their wedding night, after drinking a great deal too much hootch, and makes it all too clear that he's about to deflower her in much the manner of Godzilla trampling Tokyo.
"Come, my little bride, cheer up!" he tells the shivering slip of a girl. "This is your wedding night!"
As he lumbers toward her, he literally cackles with lust. Ah, watch the tooth marks start appearing on the scenery!
Amazingly, a great many of Slaughter's "classics" are available on home video and DVD--and have been for some time. You can buy them for way less than $10 at several online outlets, such as www.oldies.com.
His first was made in 1935: "Maria Marten," which was known as "Murder in the Red Barn" when released in the U.S. Following close behind was "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," in which Slaughter slashes the throats of men who come in for a close shave, then drops the body into the basement through a trap door under the barber chair. His trusty female companion from next door then chops up the corpses and bakes them in meat pies she sells in her adjacent pie shop.
In 1936, Slaughter made "The Crimes of Stephen Hawke," another of my favorites, in which he plays a quiet, unassuming man by day and a notorious killer known as The Spine Breaker by night. "The Face at the Window" (1939) finds Slaughter playing a drooling maniac killer known as The Wolf. There are several more out there on video, if you develop a taste for his sort of thing.
While the Brits were giving us the loan of the elegant and grandly demonic Boris Karloff to use in our horror movies, they were selfishly keeping Tod Slaughter all to themselves. Of course, some silly people might suggest Slaughter's florid acting style didn't travel well and he'd have been reduced to tatters in the hands of an American movie director. We'll never know. He didn't travel, period--and most of his films of the 1935-40 period were directed by his pal George King, who just sort of stood back and let Slaughter have his way with the scenery.
It's so nice to know that most of Slaughter's
film work has been preserved for today's new generation to examine
and appreciate. But then today's new generation already has been
overfed by Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger, Tony Perkins' Norman
Bates and all those Edgar Allan Poe movies starring Vincent Price,
so maybe they wouldn't know a real world class scenery chomper
if they saw one.
©2006 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Aug. 28, 2006. The illustrations are courtesy of Alpha Video. The Alpha collection of Slaughter films is available online from www.oldies.com.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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