Watch The Greed of William Hart For Free

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Surprising to find this was filmed in 1948, it has that same very slow pacing of the pre-war classic horrors such as the incomparable Dracula in 1936. It is very much in the tradition of Victorian stage melodrama and there was no greater exponent and resurrectionist of the genre than Todd Slaughter, florid theatrical actor-manager and famous ham who here makes his last film outing. Surrounded by some excellent character actors - Henry Oscar and Aubrey Woods, the normally OTT Slaughter is more confined but perhaps more effective. In a way this is a film noir - for reasons perhaps of economy, exteriors are all studio bound at night but in portraying the dingy canyon like lanes of Edinburgh works very well. The production is rather stagey - but stage melodrama was Slaughter's speciality. The plot is wordy but quite involving and genuinely grimNot exactly a must-see but for those interested in the more curious British films certainly well worth watching. Thanks yet again to Talking Pictures TV for screening itA 6.5

A movie so poorly made that it seems 20 years older than it is, "Horror Maniacs" (or "The Greed of William Hart") is a creaky antique that makes its subject matter deadly dull even if the actual history behind its connection with real life events is fascinatingly macabre. With names changed due to lawsuits from family members of the characters it portrays, a lot of the details are obviously missing, mainly because the print available is approximately 25 minutes short of the original running time. The editing out of the character's real life names is so badly dubbed that what was looped in sounds louder than the rest of the soundtrack.The difference between this and other Tod Slaughter films is that his earlier films gave a historical feeling of what the old gaslight theaters of the late 1800's and early 1900's must have been like with the melodramatic thrillers that were popular during this era. This one isn't even an interesting account of the Burke and Hare case of the 1820's in Edinburgh. Slaughter plays his character as if he was mentally retarded and he seems relatively normal when compared to his nefarious partner played by Henry Oscar. Aubrey Woods gives an interesting performance as the very sensitive Jamie Wilson, a rather effeminate young man who shows fear at the very mention of people disappearing in the area where he lives. There is really no element of terror here which makes the insinuations of what the two grave robbers (who also kill for profit) all the less menacing.

This film is not at all "under one hour of running time", I suspect that some US video collectors saw only a cut version. The original running time - in Great-Britain - was 79 mins (7005 feet). It was released in the USA (as "Horror Maniacs") in the early Fifties, as part of a double-bill with another Tod Slaughter film ("The Curse of the Wraydons", renamed "Strangler's Morgue"), cut to 72 mins. And more recently, an American video company "offered" a totally butchered version, reduced to 53 mins!Happily enough, the complete 79 mins version is now available from some video companies.

Under an hour in length, this film about two bodysnatchers named Wally Hart and Mr. Moore(obviously meant to be Burke and Hare)showcases the immense talent of British ham Tod Slaughter, one of the truly forgotten kings of horror. It is weak in plot development, and it has little action, but the film does a good job creating the atmosphere of the poor and wicked in Edinburgh during a time when bodies were needed for medical use. A lot more could have been done with the film, but taken as it is, it is entertaining just as a vehicle in which to see Tod Slaughter cackle and gesture about. It is not Slaughter's best, however, but he does have moments as an amoral ressurectionist who kills for money with no compunction or moral barrier at all. The rest of the cast is average at best, and the film suffers from a very evident low budget. This was one of Slaughter's last "big" films. It is a shame that he was never given a budget for a film that would have made him more popular with audiences today. So few people have seen his films, and this film seems to be somewhat obscure. I recommend the film based on his presence(not performance).