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Australia: A criminal (Tod Slaughter) kills Percival Glyde, then
assumes his identity and returns to Great Britain in his placeto receive
Glyde's father's nheritance, which he thinks is quite substantial ... of
course, a plot like this can only work because Glyde has been away from
home for over 20 years and hardly anyone can remember him anymore or knows
what he looks like.
Back home though, the false Glyde is met with shock after shock: His
father hasn't left him a vast fortune but a vast amount of debts, Glyde
had a daughter with Ms Catherick (Elsie Wagstaff) 20 years ago who has
turned into a madwoman wih an overpowering hatred for her father, the
madwoman has broken out of the asylum she has been kept at and is now
apparently after his blood, roaming his neighbourhood all dressed in
white, the head of the asylum she was kept in, Doctor Fosco (Hay Petrie),
has found a handle to blackmail Glyde (the false one that is), and Jessica
(Rita Grant), the maid he has an affair with, gets pregnant ...
So Glyde takes things into his own hands: He insists on marrying Laurie
(Sylvia Marriott), the enormously wealthy girl who was promised to him all
those years ago, he kills Jessica in cold blood so she can't endanger the
wedding, then he kills Ms Catherick, one of the few people who know he is
not relly Glyde. Eventually the wedding takes place, even though Laurie
detests him and is of course secretly in love with another man, her tutor
Paul (Geoffrey Wardwell), who tries everything to prevent the wedding, but
with little success. Eventually, Glyde even manages to track down Ms
Catherick's daughter - but when he overpowers her, he's in for a surprise:
She's the exact double of his wife Laurie - but she's also suffering from
a terrible cold - which gives Glyde a great idea: Why not throwing his
wife into the asylum claiming she's the madwoman while letting the
Catherick girl die from her cold taking his wife's place. Of course the
plan works - with a little help of Doc Fosco -, but soon enough, the good
Doctor shows up at his doorstep demanding more money than ever, Paul
eventually finds Laurie in the asylum and frees her, Laurie's sister
Marion (Hilary Eaves)suspects some foul play considering her sister's
death ... and in the end, Glyde's house goes up in flames, and the false
Glyde with it ... As with all of Tod Slaughter's output, Crimes
at the Dark House is not the most subtle of films and some of its
plottwists just seem awfully far-fetched, plus its direction is at times
awfully stagey, but that said, the film is still good fun, an entertaining
piece of the old-fashioned (if not to say creaky) shocker/melodrama
variety, carried by and large by - who else - Tod Slaughter, once again
hamming it up like the best of them. By the way, many of the film's
plottwists are the exact same also used in Slaughter's earlier Murder
in the Red Barn.
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