Watch Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn For Free

You won't be disappointed!

Sorry, this movie sucks

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is a very scary movie. You have been warned. This is a very scary movie. It has a great story line. It also has great acting. It is scarier then A Nightmare on elm street. Do not think because it an old movie that can not be scary. This is a very scary. Do not watch it alone. It will make you AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

THE MURDER IN THE RED BARN, sometimes subtitled MARIA MARTEN, is based on the true story of a murder that took place in Suffolk in 1828. It was subsequently adapted for the stage by the Victorians, and in the 20th century Tod Slaughter became popular for his performance as Squire Corder, the villain of the play. With the success of Dracula, FRANKENSTEIN, et all in the early 1930s, some cheapie British producers obviously felt the time was right for some home-grown horror and melodrama, and the play was finally adapted for the big screen. This low budget production is neatly preceded by an announcer introducing all of the actors in the movie, which proves to be a charming reminder of the olden times.The film itself is a sometimes turgid potboiler that manages to pack quite a lot of detail and incident into a scant one hour running time. To cut the story short, a young village woman shuns her gypsy lover in favour of an older seducer. When her seducer learns she has become pregnant, he murders her, with the rest of the film chronicling the subsequent investigation (by the Bow Street Runners, no less). THE MURDER IN THE RED BARN is cheaply made and impoverished, and the sets and camera-work can't hold a candle to American or German competitors. However, it is entertaining in its own right, with an engaging storyline – forgotten today – and a barnstorming performance from Tod Slaughter, one that was to put him on the movie map and which was to lead to his typecasting as a villain in another dozen or so movies over the next twenty years. Slaughter is an acquired taste, to be sure; he's often hammy, but gives the performance here his all, so he's impossible to dislike; imagine an early Vincent Price or Michael Gough and you'll be halfway there, although Slaughter is all on his own. He's like a throwback, a leftover from yesteryear, an age when silent film and stage actors had to overdo their expressions and overemphasise their lines so audiences could understand what was going on.The rest of the cast are also surprisingly good, and I can't think of one weak performance. Sophie Stewart is a damsel in distress whom you can root for, while Eric Portman's gypsy hero is always sympathetic. Inspector Lestrade actor Dennis Hoey has fun in a mostly comic supporting role as a gambler who drains Slaughter's money. The first half of the film is quite slowly paced, setting up the plot until the actual murder, but the last twenty minutes is tremendous fun, with people shooting pistols all over the place, Slaughter undergoing a mental breakdown and becoming haunted and mad in equal measure, and a neat conclusion that sees him climbing the gallows. Slaughter's next role was to be his most famous; that of SWEENEY TODD, DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET.

Prior to renting the video of this movie, I had no idea who Tod Slaughter was, why he has a cult following, or exactly what people meant when they said he was "hamming it up". I couldn't have told you the difference between a Victorian melodrama and a Greek tragedy.Well, after viewing it, I still couldn't tell you what the big deal with Mr. Slaughter is or how this was any more melodramatic than, say, the movies Hitchcock was making at around the same time, but I will say that this movie was well made and thoroughly entertaining, with never a dull moment. You need not be a Tod Slaughter devotee or know a thing about the history of English theatre to enjoy it.The Murder in the Red Barn reaffirms my belief that movies from the early sound period managed to pack a lot more into their short running times than today's, which have doubled in length. The action in this movie was non-stop.Other reviewers have stated that this film feels more like a stage play, but I find that many of the films from this period have that feel. There obviously wasn't as wide a gap between the cinema and theatre back then as there is today.

Until a few weeks ago, I had never even heard of Tod Slaughter. Now I have got to see three of his films and I absolutely love him. He is the master of pomposity. He has virtually no moral sense. In all three films, he frolics with much younger women. He has no qualms about bumping off anyone that gets in his way. In this film, he is a squire who has run up some sizable gambling debts. He has been wooing a local man's daughter, for obvious reasons. She is even willing to marry him, but he needs money, so, instead, he becomes engaged to the ugly daughter of a rich man. To seal things up, he must kill the attractive young woman and then cover his tracks. No one believes the young gypsy man who figures things out. There is a lot of classism going on. He is one of the haves and the have nots must curtsy to him. When Slaughter is on the screen he is absolutely dominating. I'm now hoping to locate some more. This is a bleak but intense film. The setting is wonderful, in the stultifying country, with its secrets. What a cad!