Stephen Hawke is a kindly money lender with a nice home and a sweet daughter. He is also 'The Spinebreaker' who steals and murders in old London town. He is eventually stopped but not before melodramatic incidents like more murders, a police official lusting after his daughter, a jail sentence etc. This is a Tod Slaughter film and it's full of those barn storming ingredients that make a tasty cinematic dish, if you like this sort of thing.
Tod Slaughter is a choice and succulent ham of course and is ably supported by a young Eric Portman as the nice young man who loves his daughter and Graham Soutten as his one-legged sidekick. His daughter is played prettily by Marjorie Taylor who appeared in other Slaughter films. It is plainly filmed and all the spine breaking is done off camera but no matter. Seeing his Tod-ness in full villainous mode is all that matters. Nobody did jocular wickedness like him.
The film is strangely bookended by sequences in a contemporary radio studio before going into the Victorian age story which doesn't add anything to the film apart from extra running time. Flotsam and Jetsam in a Tod Slaughter film? Bizarre.
Tod Slaughter is a choice and succulent ham of course and is ably supported by a young Eric Portman as the nice young man who loves his daughter and Graham Soutten as his one-legged sidekick. His daughter is played prettily by Marjorie Taylor who appeared in other Slaughter films. It is plainly filmed and all the spine breaking is done off camera but no matter. Seeing his Tod-ness in full villainous mode is all that matters. Nobody did jocular wickedness like him.
The film is strangely bookended by sequences in a contemporary radio studio before going into the Victorian age story which doesn't add anything to the film apart from extra running time. Flotsam and Jetsam in a Tod Slaughter film? Bizarre.