NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Indicator Blu-ray (November 2023): Indicator have transferred eight Tod Slaughter films to four Blu-rays in their The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments, 1935-1940 boxset. The 4 Blu-ray disc package is cited as having "New 2K restorations of Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke, It’s Never Too Late to Mend, The Ticket of Leave Man, and Crimes at the Dark House from 4K scans of original 35mm nitrate negative elements. 2K restoration of Sexton Blake and The Hooded Terror from a 4K scan of a 35mm dupe positive. Remaster of The Face at the Window from a 4K scan".

I believe these are all new to Blu-ray except The Face at the Window that had a Kino 1080P edition in 2020 - that we reviewed HERE. We've compared a few captures below and the quality is the same but the Indicator has cropped away the rounded corners that the Kino left visible.

The image quality for this set is very strong - surprisingly clean and damage-free - as the elements are consistent, mostly having strong density, and in fine condition. They all appear to have max'ed out bitrates and two films are shared per dual-layered Blu-ray disc. Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn looks highly pleasing - sharp with balanced contrast - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street may be a tad softer but, again, consistent - The Crimes of Stephen Hawke is excellent with a few dark scenes of more blocky grain - It’s Never Too Late to Mend's contrast may be a notch more dull - The Ticket of Leave Man is at a high image quality level with pleasing shadows defined - Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror looks stronger with a small handful of softer scenes and quite heavy grain in certain sequences - The Face at the Window compares favorably with the existing Kino 1080P - both showing the same light, vertical scratches (as noted, the Indicator crops away the rounded corners.) Lastly, Crimes at the Dark House, the 'youngest' of the eight films looks the best without any notable flaws and it exports frequent depth. The transfer handles the night scenes without issue. Pretty darn impressive video, overall.

NOTE: We have added 260 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-rays, Indicator use linear PCM mono tracks (24-bit) in the original English language for all eight films. The audio transfers produce similar sound quality - surprisingly quite good without issues like hiss etc. There is violence in all the films but it is mostly cloaked. A few have dangerous fire conclusions but Tod's dastardly characters are more known for strangulation using garrotes or his bare hands. What a brute. The films were composed by, uncredited Leo T. Croke (Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn being his second and last composition work.) Eric Ansell was uncredited for the score for 1936's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and also had limited work in that field. The music for The Crimes of Stephen Hawke was uncredited to Colin Wark who accomplished his last work the following year. Keen fans may recognize Johann Strauss's On the Beautiful Blue Danube (Op. 314) and a bit of Colonel Bogey used in the film. The prolific British pianist Jack Beaver did the scores for the rest of the films; It’s Never Too Late to Mend (the film also uses Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 1.) Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror, Crimes at the Dark House (which has some Schumann, Mendelssohn and Beethoven's "Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (The Pastoral)",) The Face at the Window, and The Ticket of Leave Man (additional Strauss, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert.) He contributed to Alfred Hitchcock's 1935's The 39 Steps and Young and Innocent in 1937. I can't say I found any inconsistencies or egregious flaws although volume levels between films fluctuated a shade. The audio was clean and clear via the uncompressed transfers. Indicator offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-rays.

The Indicator Blu-rays offers new (2023) commentaries for all eight films. We get Josephine Botting and Victor Alfred Cornelius Eustace Beltane Diggory Penrith Prattellewzowskiey, (commonly known as Vic Pratt) on Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn. Botting is a curator at the BFI National Archive and they have worked together of vintage British film commentaries (and other disc supplements.) For Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street we get a commentary by film historians Kim Newman (author of Classic Monsters Unleashed) and Stephen Jones (author of The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror: Evil Lives On in the Land!), and it is right up their alley as they share details on Slaughter, the genre with multiple examples of similar movies of the era an beyond. I thoroughly enjoyed it. On The Crimes of Stephen Hawke we get an informative commentary by critics and authors David McGillivray (co-author of Doing Rude Things: The History of the British Sex Film) and Kim Newman. Podcaster Dave Thomas joins Josephine Botting for the commentary on The Ticket of Leave Man. They start with describing what the title refers to; a 'ticket of leave' was a document of parole issued to convicts who had shown they could now be trusted with some freedoms. I also enjoyed this one. Stephen Jones and Kim Newman pair up again for the commentary of Sexton Blake and The Hooded Terror. They inform us that Sexton Blake was a fictional detective, featured in many British comic strips, novels and dramatic productions since 1893. Both on The Face at the Window and Crimes at the Dark House we get the commentary team of Kevin Lyons (The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television) and Jonathan Rigby (author English Gothic: A Century Of Horror Cinema). They never fail to both entertain and educate. All eight commentaries have value - excellent.

There are two new interviews, in one dozen-minute video piece, with Imogen Slaughter, great-niece of Tod Slaughter, and her father Giles, in which they discuss their famous relative’s life off stage and off camera. Tod wasn't always the villain and, on stage, he played the great detective in The Return of Sherlock Holmes and D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers. There is also a new 10-minute interview with illustrator / graphic designer and  art director from Warsaw, Poland Ania Goszczyńska and Current 93 channeller (Current 93 are an English experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms) and trance scribbler David Tibet. The pair delve into their long-term obsession with the life and work of the first British villain. We are treated to an hour of Stephen Thrower on Tod Slaughter where the author (Murderous Passions Volume 1: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco) and musician dissects the great actor’s multiple villainous incarnations. He seems to cover every nook and cranny of the actor's history from stage and screen and nefarious, heinous, personas in the extra entitled "Full-Blooded". A great reference. The Tod Slaughter Repertory Company is a dozen-minute video essay by Michael Brooke on the regular players from Slaughter’s stage experience and feature films. In the course of watching these eight films you frequently see repeat performers. Michael identifies them and gives some background history. Indicator include Maria Marten and Sweeney Todd 4-act radio plays from 1932. These are newly remastered from original 78 RMP shellac discs. These original recordings are presented with optional, newly recorded Current 93 scores. Pretty cool. 1926's London After Dark is the first known film footage of Slaughter, captured on stage at the Elephant and Castle Theatre (Southeast London - it was closed down in 1927, after Slaughter's company vacated it several months earlier), presented with optional, newly recorded Current 93 score. It runs over 7-minutes. Tod Slaughter at Home is a 4-minute, 1936, mock interview with Sweeney Todd, recorded for the Pathétone newsreel. Pots of Plots is a short, 1938, film in which Slaughter, sitting at the make-up station in his dressing room, reprises three of his infamous villainous roles, including Sweeney Todd. Bothered by a Beard is a1946, 35-minute, humorous short educational film which traces the history of shaving, featuring a scene in Sweeney Todd’s infamous barber shop. Puzzle Corner No. 14 is a 19-minute Sweeney Todd monologue from 1954, representing Slaughter’s last appearance on camera. There are extensive image galleries of promotional and publicity material for all eight films and The Crimes of Stephen Hawke original treatment gallery. The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments, 1935-1940 package contains a limited edition exclusive 120-page book with new essays by Jean-Claude Michel, Ania Goszczyńska and David Tibet, Doug Young and Kip-Xool, excerpts from Slaughter’s unpublished memoirs, archival essays and reviews, and film credits

It could easily be stated that Tod Slaughter's 'Quota quickie' (as defined by the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927) in the thirties could stand cohesively as a distinctive body of work. These Victorian period 'shockers' were not a series but an unrelated sequence of films which had similar plots and themes. They were often produced by the same film crew and had recurring cast members who played similar characters in each film. These include Slaughter as a greed-motivated, murderous - if not downright sociopathic - villain; Marjorie Taylor as the reluctant love interest, John Warwick, Norman Pierce, D. J. Williams, Eric Portman, Robert Adair repeated as law enforcement etc. The 'Quota quickie' was important in helping begin the careers of such directors as Michael Powell, Carol Reed and David Lean as well as actors Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, John Mills and James Mason. Tod Slaughter's swiftly produced Victorian shockers have, strangely, been historically overlooked as a forgotten corner of 1930s British cinema. They have been being passed over - defined generically as "cinema of excess". This may reflect Slaughter's flamboyant dramaturgy having strong theatrical roots - he played the title character in Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street over 2,000 times on stage. There is certainly a connection of these addictively formulaic films to lucrative Hammer Horrors and their Gothic aesthetic rendition of classic characters such as Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy - using delightfully formal Victorian dialogue... however, without that Studio's cleavage titillations. These Tod Slaughter gems remain uniquely distinguishable while still appealing to British popular culture as adaptations of literature or fictionalizations of genuine historical accounts / true crime. I was reminded of the US-made Inner Sanctum Mysteries; dark stories of mystery, terror, suspense, infrequently including 'cut-to-the-chase' character introductions. They both had efficient productions and economical running times extending slightly over an hour each. The eight macabre Slaughter films in Indicator's essential package are even more entertaining, in my opinion. The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments, 1935-1940 Blu-ray set will deservedly get plenty of attention in our year-end poll for the content of eight highly enjoyable films that have strong HD presentations and the complete-ness of the package with eight new commentaries, new interviews, appreciations, archival short films, radio plays, extensive image galleries and a 120-page book! Our highest recommendation.

Gary Tooze