George King | The Crimes of Stephen Hawke / 1936

nasty, common people

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jack Celestin, Frederick Hayward, H. F. Maltby, Tod Slaughter, and Paul White (screenplay), George King (director) The Crimes of Stephen Hawke / 1936

 

The third is a series of collaborations between George King and the British horror star Tod Slaughter, following Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn (1935) and Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), The Crimes of Stephen Hawke was one of the many films made to fulfill the quota of homemade products that the British Government had required of the film industry, in part as a response to the glut of the US films monopolizing the movie theaters of England.

    It begins in one of the strangest manners imaginable, with the Music Hall duo of Flotsam and Jetsam, consisting of the Anglo-Australian team of Bentley Collingwood Hilliam and Malcolm McEachern—precursors of Michael Swann and Donald Flanders—who perform witty songs with rhymed couplets about the daily news. Following this “skit” is a character figure, Mr. Henry Hopkins who has been selling “cats meat for 50 years,” with somewhat bawdy jokes such as that about an elderly woman who absolutely loved pussies. The final act is by the actor of the film, Tod Slaughter who discusses the numerous crimes he has committed in the past—on stage of course.

     Then begins the film proper which is about a mean-spirited moneylender, Stephen Hawke (Slaughter) who in the very first scene is already up to no good. As Mark Davis Walsh describes it: “He’s casing the mansion of rich nobleman Lord Trelawny with an eye to a heist. But skulking under the radar isn’t really in his special set of skills and he’s spotted by the old goat’s annoying adolescent son.”

     Confronted with the unpleasant Little Lord Fauntleroy who immediately informs him “My father doesn’t keep a garden for nasty, common people like you to look at,” Hawke, obviously offended, lures the nasty boy to him by asking not if the boy might like some candy or to see a magic trick, but “Have you ever seen a Paradoxical Tarradidilum?” It works perfectly, as the child comes forward and the monstrous Hawke crushes him to death. And so we learn immediately in this film of no deep secrets that Hawke is the notorious “Spine Breaker,” with hands so strong that they leave red marks as a signature upon the several bodies he squashes to death.

      Hawke returns his standard pair of spectacles to his face, crawls into the carriage that his dear friend—perhaps his only true friend or maybe even somewhat more than that—the one-legged, one-eyed, hunched-back coachman/servant Nathaniel (Ben Soutten) has held waiting for him, and rushes back to his town, irritated that he was unable to carry through with his “business deal.”

      Had the movie kept up the campy humor of these first scenes, it might have been truly a gem. But nearly everything else after, alas, becomes far too tame and obvious. Now that we know the identity of the monster, we need only sit back and await until the others of this busy story find out.

      First up is his lovely daughter Julia (Marjorie Taylor). We quickly discern that she’s not his real daughter which, thank heaven, removes her from the possibility of having inherited insanity (a bit like Mortimer Brewster’s necessary discovery that he’s not really a Brewster in Arsenic and old Lace). Why he has adopted her—one of the few kindly actions of his entire life—and why he has remained so very devoted to her is never explained, one of the very few questions of this tale that is never answered. She shows up as his office and, unable to find him in, goes next door to the offices of his good friend, the shipping magnate Joshua Trimble (DJ Williams), who respects and admires Hawke for his past willingness to loan his company money, which since he still survives he obviously paid back quickly.

     His son and partner Matthew (Eric Portman), moreover, is in love with Julia and she with him, despite the fact that as one of the Letterboxd commentators notes, “Portman with a mustache and effeminately curly hair wearing tights... makes me wish he was in more period pieces. Gainsborough, where were you when we (the gays) needed you?” He’s actually wearing high breeches of the 18th century, not tights, but he is indeed the most beautiful figure in this film, and throughout his tepid love scenes with Julia (Taylor)—particularly when he has determined to track down and kill her father, deciding to end his relationship with Julia forever—Portman barely attempts to disguise the fact that, in real life, he was homosexual.

     The very night after doing away with the young boy, moreover, Hawke has arranged a special ball for his daughter, inviting several wealthy people, including Lord Brickhaven (George M. Slater) and his renowned emerald ring. Did I say, invited? Let me correct that, he has demanded the appearance of Brickhaven, despite his plans to be elsewhere, insisting his coachman find a way to get him there. At the party, we learn that other than her constant dancing partner, Julia has another man, Miles Archer (Gerald Barry), the chief of police, interested in marrying her; or, as a friend of Hawke’s insists, is determined to marry her. Hawke makes it clear, such a marriage would be permitted over his dead body.

      It surely is no surprise that Brickhaven dies of a crushed spine at the party, his emerald having gone missing, with his coachman declaring to the guests the murderer is the host himself. Everyone is predictably incredulous.

      Only Joshua Trimble is highly disturbed that the “Spine Breaker” must be someone of their own set to have been able to access the Lord at Hawke’s party, and he confronts his friend the very next day. Hawke, however, having just received a new piece of sculptor, sits toying with it, not at all interested in Trimble’s worries. When Trimble reminds his friend that the coachman had called him the “Spine Breaker,” Hawke breaks the marble sculpture’s head off, forcing the shipper to declare “Your hands! They have sinews of steel.” Trimble now recognizes the truth, carefully backing out of Hawke’s office, and losing his life for his knowledge when he is crushed to death in his bed the very next night.

     Fortunately, he has expressed his suspicions to Matthew, and Matthew now confronts the ogre with the fact that his father had left some secret information to be read only after his burial, information his son has hidden on his father’s dead body. When Hawke shows up to steal even from the corpse that evening, he finds what at first appears to be ghost of his dead friend, actually Matthew rising up to declare he now has the proof he needed, and giving him the opportunity to run before he hunts him down.

     It is at this point that Matthew abandons Julia, as he chases after her father to bring him to justice for his father’s murder. And the rest of the story focuses on a far different vision of Hawke, a terrified man trying to outrun his nemesis, a man who would prefer to spend time in prison for a minor act of thievery than to have to face his younger foe. Although Matthew tracks him down to an inn far out of London and even follows him back toward London, the track goes cold when Hawkes is imprisoned, and all believe him now to be dead.

     In the meantime, the police chief Archer has beaten a confession out of Brickhaven’s coachman and confronts Julia with her father’s guilt. He will save Hawke from imprisonment only if she agrees to marry him. What’s a girl to do when her lover is trying to murder her beloved father and the other reveals him to be a monster but promises, nonetheless, to save him? Obviously, she chooses family devotion over any moral principles.

     But when Hawke gets word that she is now marrying Archer, he finds a way to escape and threatens to destroy not only Archer but anyone who dares to stand in his way. Matthew also returns in shock that his beloved Julia has allowed herself to be blackmailed by Archer.

      Frankly, it is difficult to see what Matthew sees in the girl. She’s certainly no beauty and even knowing the truth will have nothing to do with her former finance as long as he is determined to seek revenge. But even Matthew is willing to overlook certain matters about her father. As he puts it: “Julia, Julia, my darling, listen to me. I know that he's the notorious 'Spine-Breaker' and he ought to be dead a hundred times but I also know that his death cannot bring my father back to life. But alive or dead it cannot alter my love for you.” Is there any man of principal left in this motion picture?

      Hawke’s return at least lets him chew a little longer on the scenery, giving it some last gripping moments before he crushes the rest of the story’s spine. The last we see of him before he falls to his death is on a crenelated corner of his mansion’s roof, lobbing whole bricks at his pursuers.

      Below, near death, he is comforted by his daughter, who having discovered he is not her real father, still embraces him with love. But it is the cry of despair of his servant Nathaniel and his final kiss that truly surprises us: clearly there was more going on in their many nights together than we might have ever imagined.

      Back at the broadcasting studio where this all began, the music hall-like performers are all asleep. Is the director suggesting that the rest of us might have already joined them or, at least will now be given permission to do so?

      This film can’t be described as a truly gay film, but in its campy, over-the-top performances and its somewhat perverted declarations of love, it most definitely is a queer work. And naturally these 1930’s works by King and the later Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s, which have been tagged the “cinema of excess” created problems for both British and particularly later US censors.

 

Los Angeles, July 11, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).