If you’re reading this review and ask ‘Tod who?’ then you have some educating to do … Way back in the dim and distant days before Hammer Films, and before even Universal Films … before Bela stalked the stage as the original Dracula … back to the 1920s in London, when Victorian folk enjoyed seeing stage performances. And none better than classic melodramas like Maria Marten: or the Murders in the Red Barn, or Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber. The man who spent most of his life popularising the form was Tod Slaughter.
That Slaughter is mostly unknown and unheard of these days is the biggest crime of all. He perfected his melodramatic characterisations to the extent that he became the go-to theatre empresario for this genre of entertainment and became Britain’s first ever true horror star.
The book is amazing. It’s at once a biography of Slaughter, but also a history of theatre and entertainment in Britain. How the music halls rose to prominence, and how the melodramatic Grande Guignols took hold. It also covers the decline of the art form as Cinema took over, and how Slaughter’s ‘household villainy’ was transferred to film – thankfully it was as we can still enjoy it today – there’s much of his material on YouTube – just search for it and enjoy that villainous chuckle!
The book is profusely illustrated with images from many of the plays and films, with playbills, quotes and all manner of other background information. It even includes extracts from Tod Slaughter’s own autobiography – until this point unpublished.
The man is such a character, so unassuming and yet so good at his art, that this book is essential reading. To discover the history of entertainment, and to see so clearly the line which joins Slaughter and his ‘Barnstorming’ players to the Universal horrors of Dracula and Frankenstein and beyond to modern-day cinema and theatre is a treat, and both the authors and publisher are to be commended. First-rate!
Mr. Murder!
Book Title: Mr Murder: The Life and Times of Tod Slaughter
Book Description: MR MURDER-The Life and Times of Tod Slaughter is the definitive biography of Gosforths’s most famous son. For the first time in print, and with the participation of Tod Slaughter himself (featuring exclusive extracts from his unpublished autobiography)
Book Author: Denis Meikle, Kip Xool and Doug Young
Book Format: Hardcover
Publisher - Orgnization: Hemlock Books Limited
Publisher Logo:
Date published: November 15, 2019
ISBN: 1999305647
Number Of Pages: 282
David J Howe, is the author and co-author of numerous books about the TV Show “Doctor Who”, as well as being a freelance writer and Editorial Director of Telos Publishing Ltd.
