THE OLD DARK HOUSE

"Whale manages to parody the conventions of the dark house horror genre as he creates them, in which respect the film remains entirely modern."

-Time Out London 

Christ they should call this movie THE OLD DARK MULTI-LEVEL MANSION 

The Old Dark House is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy horror film directed by James Whale. Based on the 1927 novel Benighted by J.B. Priestley. Driving through a brutal thunderstorm in Wales, three travelers take refuge in an eerie house owned by the Femm family. Reluctantly admitted by Horace Femm, the three sit down to a strange dinner. Horace is neurotic; mute butler Morgan (Boris Karloff) is an alcoholic; and Horace's sister, Rebecca, raves about chastity. When the storm brings in an industrialist and chorus girl Gladys DuCane Perkins, Morgan's lust and Rebecca's ire are ignited. 

Movies from this period are a bit of a mixed bag for me. Sometimes there wonderfully gothic chilling masterpieces ALA DRACULA and THE BLACK CAT, and sometimes its just a bunch of old white people standing around talking about the good stuff you never really get to see in any satisfaction. In the United States, Variety and The Hollywood Filmograph gave the film negative reviews, with Variety calling it a "somewhat inane picture".

That being said All nine of the New York City dailies gave the film positive reviews. Even now the film has seemingly equal piles of positive and negative reviews, so I guess ill have to see which pile is more appealing when the review Is over. 

This isn’t one of those movies I can almost instantly fall in love with, but it very quickly proves itself as a surprisingly fun and self aware horror comedy. I had a hard time at first figuring out if this movies comedy was intentional, or if its simply the fact that this completely ridiculous movie insists on taking itself seriously. Its no coincidence that this movie follows an almost identical setup as THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, and as the film unfolds you can clearly see just how intentional the comedy is. 

Another issue I have had with movies like this are the characters blending together. All the men wear the same suits and questionable facial hair, all the women have the same perfectly curled hair and floor length blouses, and it often leaves me wondering exactly who does what. This movie side steps that problem by having some quite strong and mostly unique characters. You are never left wondering who is who, and every character decision makes perfect sense given there situation. So we have a handful of strong characters exploring an OLD DARK HOUSE, but what’s the conflict? The storm is the inciting incident and nothing more, so the conflict is what then? Boredom? A potentially dangerous drunken mute who vanishes for large parts of the story whos kryptonite appears to be mediocre stage fighting? Wrong wrong and wrong again, the real conflict in this movie is one that is never really even hinted at until 40 minutes into the movie. The 16th student, to speak in DANGONRANPA terms, who has been quietly shuffling in a locked room at the top of the stairs. everytime this movie seems to be running out of steam, some new element is thrown in to keep things interesting. It’s a bit surprising to me that this movie isn’t more widely discussed, but that probably has something to do with this movies bizzaro history. 

In 1957, Universal Studios lost the rights to the original story, and a remake was released in 1963, directed by William Castle and co-produced with Hammer Film Productions. For many years, the original version was considered a lost film and gained a tremendous reputation as one of the pre-eminent gothic horror films. Director Curtis Harrington, a friend of Whale, helped to rediscover The Old Dark House, having repeatedly asked Universal Studios to locate the film negative. Harrington eventually discovered a print of the film in the vaults of Universal in 1968. He persuaded the George Eastman House film archive to finance a new duplicate negative of the poorly kept first reel, and restore the rest of the film. 

Im glad they went through such pains to bring this movie back into the spot light, and next time you find yourself in a hurracine with nothing to watch I highly recommend giving this movie a watch. 

Or the light house.

Or THE FOG  

8/10