FA LA LA LA....AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Here, as part of the Christmas Week Tod Slaughter Blog-A-Thon masterminded by Joe Monster at From Beyond Depraved, is a glimpse of Mr. Slaughter when you’d expect him to be out of character. The problem is, he apparently never was!

Tod Slaughter, for those who don't know, was an actor who specialized in playing villains on the British stage. He became strongly identified with Sweeney Todd, and went on to play him in the first filmed version of that famous gory story. This "newsreel" introduces movie audiences to Slaughter just as that film arrived in cinemas. You can tell the man really loves his work (just a little too much, in fact, as this luckless "journalist" is about to find out!)



This appeared with other “newsreels” by the Pathe company between feature films at the local cinema. It was, of course, really an ad for Slaughter’s 1936 film “Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber Of Fleet Street.”

Sadly, there are no films featuring Mr. Slaughter as an evil Santa. He would have made a great one, but such an idea would have been way ahead of its time.