Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror | |
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Directed by | George King |
Screenplay by | A.R. Rawlinson (screenplay & dialogue) |
Based on | The Mystery of No 13. Caversham Square by Pierre Quiroule |
Produced by | George King |
Starring | George Curzon Tod Slaughter |
Cinematography | Hone Glendinning |
Edited by | John Seabourne |
Music by | Jack Beaver (as 'music director') Bretton Byrd (uncredited) |
Production company | George King Productions |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (UK) |
Release date |
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Running time | 70 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror is a 1938 British crime film directed by George King and starring George Curzon, Tod Slaughter and Greta Gynt. [1] It was George Curzon's third and final outing as the fictional detective Sexton Blake. [2]
The film - described as the best in the Blake series of 1930s movies [3] [4] - features the character of Sexton Blake and his efforts to defeat a major crime organisation headed by Michael Larron, a 'sort of Moriarty figure'. [5]
Of the film's villain, Leonard Maltin concluded, "Slaughter plays it basically straight in this passable low-budget outing"; [6] while Dennis Schwartz wrote, "Tod Slaughter is a trip as the perverse villain drooling over both stamps and Julie (Greta Gynt), and decked out when meeting gang members in a spiffy black robe with a snake embroidered on its front and a fashionable KKK-like hood. Like Vincent Price, Slaughter can make a not too original low-budget B film fun to watch." [7]
Sexton Blake is a fictional character, a detective who has been featured in many British comic strips, novels and dramatic productions since 1893. Sexton Blake adventures were featured in a wide variety of British and international publications from 1893 to 1978, comprising more than 4,000 stories by some 200 different authors. Blake was also the hero of numerous silent and sound films, radio serials, and a 1960s ITV television series.
Commander Chambré George William Penn Curzon, known as George Curzon, was a Royal Navy commander, actor, and father of the present Earl Howe.
Highway 301 is an American 1950 film noir written and directed by Andrew L. Stone, and starring Steve Cochran, Virginia Grey, Gaby André and Edmon Ryan.
Behind Locked Doors is a 1948 film noir directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Lucille Bremer, Richard Carlson and Tor Johnson.
David Farrar was an English stage and film actor.
Norman Carter Slaughter, also known as Tod Slaughter, was an English actor, best known for playing over-the-top maniacs in macabre film adaptations of Victorian melodramas.
George King was an English actors' agent, film director, producer and screenplay writer. He is associated with the production of quota quickies. He directed several of Tod Slaughter's melodramas, including 1936's The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Easy Money is a 1948 British satirical film directed by Bernard Knowles and starring Greta Gynt, Dennis Price and Jack Warner. It was written by Muriel and Sydney Box, based on the 1948 play of the same title by Arnold Ridley. It was released by Gainsborough Pictures.
A masked villain, also seen as masked mystery villain, is a stock character in genre fiction. It was developed and popularized in movie serials, beginning with The Hooded Terror in The House of Hate, (1918) the first fully-costumed mystery villain of the movies, and frequently used in the adventure stories of pulp magazines and sound-era movie serials in the early twentieth century, as well as postmodern horror films where the character "hides in order to claim unsuspecting victims". They can also appear in crime fiction to add to the atmosphere of suspense and suspicion. It is used to engage the readers or viewers by keeping them guessing just as the characters are, and suspension by drawing on the fear of the unknown. The "Mask" need not be literal, referring more to the subterfuge involved.
Captain Stingaree is a supervillain in the DC Comics universe, and a minor foe of Batman. He first appeared in Detective Comics #460, and was created by Bob Rozakis, Michael Uslan and Ernie Chan.
Greta Gynt was a Norwegian dancer and actress. She is remembered for her starring roles in the British classic films The Dark Eyes of London, Mr. Emmanuel, Take My Life, Dear Murderer and The Ringer.
Murder at Covent Garden is a 1932 British crime film directed by Leslie S. Hiscott and starring Dennis Neilson-Terry, Anne Grey, George Curzon and Walter Fitzgerald. It was made at Twickenham Studios. The screenplay involves a detective who investigates the murder of a night club owner.
The Last Curtain is a 1937 British crime film directed by David MacDonald and starring Campbell Gullan, Kenne Duncan and Greta Gynt. The film blends drama and comedy and its plot follows an insurance investigator who examines a series of robberies that have taken place. Much of the action takes place backstage at the fictitious Trafalgar Theatre.
Sexton Blake and the Bearded Doctor is a 1935 British mystery film directed by George A. Cooper and starring George Curzon, Henry Oscar and Tony Sympson. It is based on the novel The Blazing Launch Murder by Rex Hardinge, and was one of George Curzon's three big screen outings as the fictional detective.
Sexton Blake and the Mademoiselle is a 1935 British crime film directed by Alex Bryce and starring George Curzon as Sexton Blake.
Hone Glendinning was a British cinematographer. He worked on over seventy films, including a number of documentaries, specialising in colour travelogues or widescreen theatrical shorts, frequently for American producer and narrator James A. FitzPatrick.
John Seabourne was a British film editor active between the 1930s and 1950s. During the early 1930s he edited British Gaumont's newsreels. He is sometimes known as John Seabourne Sr. to distinguish him from his son.
George Hamilton Teed was a Canadian author who also wrote under the pen-names G. H. Teed, Hamilton Teed, Louis Brittany, Peter Kingsland, and Desmond Reid. Teed was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick. He specialized in adventure fiction and detective stories, but also wrote science fiction and the odd romance. He is best remembered for his tales of Sexton Blake, a popular, fictional British detective who featured in a wide variety of publications in the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote close to three hundred Blake tales, more than any other author, and his creations and writings are considered "the best in Blake history before the Second World War."
The Last Barricade is a 1938 British drama film directed by Alex Bryce and starring Frank Fox, Greta Gynt and Meinhart Maur. It was produced by the British subsidiary of 20th Century Fox at the company's Wembley Studios in London for release as a Quota Quickie. The film's sets were designed by the art director Carmen Dillon.
Henry Thomas Blyth (1852–1898) was a British writer who also wrote under the pen-name Hal Meredith. Blyth was born in Greenwich, London. He wrote for many of Alfred Harmsworth's papers of the 1890s, and is mostly remembered for creating detective Sexton Blake.