Andrew Lloyd Webber's adaptation: Sir Percival Glyde is an ambitious social-climbing aristocrat who became infatuated with the young Anne when she was born. When Anne turned 15, Glyde beat and raped her, and when she gave birth to their child, Glyde believed it wasn't his and drowned it. Glyde then had the traumatized Anne locked up in an asylum to silence her. A few years later, Glyde marries Anne's half-sister Laura, whom he beats and abuses daily, in order to get their father's money, but when Laura rejects him, Glyde decides to fake her death by killing Anne in her place and then putting Laura in the asylum. On being confronted by Laura disguised as her sister's ghost, Glyde cruelly admits that he drowned Anne's baby and taunts that her secret won't ever get out. When Laura reveals herself, he tries to kill her as well.
1940 adaptation Crimes At The Dark House, the nameless Spook taking the identity of "Sir Percival Glyde" is a grinning, cackling madman who murders his namesake by hammering a tent peg into his skull, all to impersonate him and inherit his estate. "Glyde" kills anyone who exposes his secret or so much as inconveniences him, from a corrupt doctor he hangs from a bell rope to the pretty young maid he strangles for wanting to elope with him. "Glyde" takes advantage of his Marital Rape License over his new bride Laurie the second he has her in bed, and even threatens to "break in" her sister as well. To gain Laurie's dowry, "Glyde" murders the mother of a local madwoman named Anne who looks just like Laurie, and passes Laurie as Anne to see her locked for the rest of her life in an asylum, while personally ensuring Anne herself freezes to death.
Hollywood Homely: Whilst Marian is described very unflatteringly in the book, most screen adaptations have her looking at least reasonably pretty.
Love to Hate: The virtually unknown 1940s adaptation, Crimes in the Dark House, had little-known but very hammy black-and-white villain actor Tod Slaughter in the role as central villain. Slaughter interjected an already-Dastardly Whiplash type villain with an evil presence comparable to the likes of the villainous turns of Boris Karloff.
