Never Too Late to Mend 2005 Horror Movie Review

Fond of the whip, the isolation chamber, straight jackets and starvation tactics, Squire Meadows is the sadistic governor of a Victorian prison who relishes making the lives of his prisoners a torturous hell. He’s also a dishonorable lecher scheming to marry Susan, a beautiful village girl. She’s deeply in love with someone else - a handsome but poverty-stricken man named George, who is forced to work in far-away Australia so he can earn enough money to wed her. The evil squire intercepts George’s long-distance love letters and coerces Susan into marrying him. News reaches the squire that George is making his way back home (and is now a wealthy man). Learing exposure, Meadows determines to destroy George before he can return.A gruesome and deliciously lurid thriller, Never Too Late To Mend places the spotlight firmly on Tod Slaughter, an often-overlooked British horror film star whose performances are always bursting with over-the-top melodrama. The film is based on the writings of Charles Reade, which inspired Queen Victoria to overhaul the deplorable conditions of the era’s prison system. Scottish-born director David MacDonald later helmed the unusual British sci-fi thriller Devil Girl From Mars, as well as episodes of the eerie Boris Karloff TV-series “The Veil.” Script writer H.F. Maltby also wrote the dialogue for Tod Slaughter’s Sweeney Todd and Crimes At The Dark House.