The Old Dark House

Plot synopsis:
On a stormy night in Wales, five people, Philip and Margaret Waverton, their friend Penderel, Sir William Porterhouse and his lady friend, chorus girl Gladys Perkins, whose stage name is DuCane, seek refuge in a gloomy house off the road. The denizens of the house include Horace Femm, an hysteric, his sister Rebecca, a religious fanatic, and Morgan, their scarred, brutish butler, who is a mute. At dinner, Horace confides that sometime in the past, their sister Rachel died in a mysterious fashion. As the evening progresses, the Wavertons discover the Femms' 102-year-old father in an upstairs room. Transformed by drink, Morgan pursues attractive Margaret up the stairs, where he craftily releases another brother, pyromaniac Saul, from his locked room at the top. Penderal and Gladys have fallen in love at first sight. They break the news to Sir William who, because he is still in love with his dead wife, is not very upset. Soon after, Penderal encounters the liberated Saul in one of the dark rooms. At first Saul seems to be the only sane inhabitant of the house, but he proves that he is as crazy as the rest when he tries to kill Penderal. Both men are wounded in the fight that follows. Morgan, having sobered up a little, carries the wounded Saul back to his room. After Gladys treats Penderal, dawn finally breaks and the storm is over. The five guests leave the house behind as quickly as possible and Horace cheerfully bids them goodbye, as if the events of the night had never happened.

Tags: insanity, entertaining

Review:
Truly one of Universal greatest unsung horror films, The Old Dark House is a unique blend of gothic setting, quirky characterizations, wicked black and dry humour, a great ensemble cast, and the workings of the mind of James Whale.
But unlike their first association, Karloff's star is far less brighter in this film as his performance, although good and servicable, is over-shadowed by atmosphere, Whale's direction, witty dialogue, and a cast of scene stealers such as Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Eva Moore, and Ernest Thesiger.
While perfectly enjoyable as a camp comedy of manners (that element comes courtesy of director James Whale) and as an elegant, low-key horror, The Old Dark House can best be appreciated when you know a little about JB Priestley, author of the source play Benighted.
Dangerous Corner and An Inspector Calls are similar examples of his work, still popular in Britain with amateur drama groups and touring theatre companies.If you can, see Old Dark House and Whale's later Bride of Frankenstein as a home video double bill and compare Ernest Thesiger's delightfully feline and remarkably similar performances as Horace Femm and Dr Praetorius.
Tales about sinister, creepy mansions were already clichéd by the time director James Whale directed THE OLD DARK HOUSE--and instead of presenting the piece as a straight-forward thriller he mixed the film's very atmospheric cinematography with a wild strain of parody.
Before the night is over the storm-weary travelers experience everything from a hellish meal to religious lectures--not to mention assault, attempted rape, mysterious cackling, a bit of arson, and a touch of homosexual hysteria (courtesy of Thesiger, Moore, and a surprise male character who is actually played by a woman) thrown in for good measure.The cast is exceptional; in addition to Karloff, Thesiger, and Moore, we have Melvyn Douglas, Raymond Massey, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, and Lilian Bond, and they wring the most from the covertly wicked script, with Eva Moore ranting about "laughter and sin," Thesiger inviting Raymond Massey into his room "to see a few things," and one of the most socially awkward meals ever put to film.
But the film's real power is its cinematography: when they say old DARK house, they really mean it, and the look of the film is just as disorienting for viewers as for the characters; particularly noteworthy is the scene in which Moore lectures Gloria Stuart, with their faces distorted by the bedroom mirror, and the sequence in which Karloff pursues the white-clad and wind-whipped Gloria Stuart with mayhem in mind.Viewers who expect "Universial Horror" fare will probably be disappointed by THE OLD DARK HOUSE, and director James Whale would create a still more memorable combination of horror and high-camp with THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTIEN.
(Whale even sends up his own back catalogue with one character shrieking "He's alive!"); while its influence on the likes of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Thundercrack, for example, is clear - another instance of one cult film paying dues to another.The plot is simplicity itself: on a dark and stormy night in the wilds of Wales, five rain-lashed travellers, including bluff industrialist Sir William Porterhouse (Laughton, in his first US film), his 'escort' Gladys DuCane (Bond), and playboy Roger Penderel (Douglas), seek refuge at the Femm family mansion.The Femms make the Addams' look like the Waltons.
You revel in the joys of fleshly love, don't you?" Then there's the wizened, androgynous family patriarch, the 102-year-old Roderick (played, bizarrely, by Elspeth Dudgeon), and assisting, their mute alcoholic butler, Morgan (Karloff), given to random acts of violence and sworn to on no account unlock the Femm's dirty little secret from the attic - a cackling pyromaniac basketcase called Saul.
("If I were better at my job, I probably wouldn't be weekending with you.") In the Femms and in their visitors we might deduce the insanity of recent history manifested in a fractured, isolated nation still suffering the psychic fall-out from the Great War. And yet even as Whale skewers the woes of a generation, he strives for a happy ending; day follows night, as inexorably as peace, however fleeting, follows conflict.Such themes may have soared clean over the heads of 1930s Americans; though owing something to the Gothic tradition (and especially The Cat And The Canary) The Old Dark House - free from supernatural trappings - stiffed on release with US audiences who might understandably have expected something a jot more 'monstrous' from the great Whale.In fact, had the print not been discovered in 1968 mouldering away, unloved and all but forgotten, in the Universal vaults by Whale's friend and fellow director Curtis Harrington, The Old Dark House might never have seen the light of day again.
It's based on the J.B. Priestley novel and it was filmed during the Pre-Code Era. I'd say it's a mixture of horror film, spoof and black comedy...in some aspects it's related to "Arsenic and Old Lace", although it has a darker mood.On a very stormy night, a group of travelers find shelter in an eerie and scary welsh manor, inhabited by the "weird" Femm family, and there begins a quick chain of events (the film lasts only 72 minutes) until the film's conclusion.
Other travelers who arrive to this Huge House, are Charles Laughton, playing a rich businessman of humble origins with his lover, Lillian Bond, who's great and very sexy in her role of a joyous chorus-girl.Then we have the Femms: Religion fanatic Rebecca Femm, who has an obsession with "sinners", expertly played by sinister-looking Eva Moore; her wishy-washy brother Horace Femm, played by the great Ernest Thesiger, who impersonated "Dr. Pretorius" in "Bride of Frankenstein"; 102 years old Sir Roderick Femm, who is played by actress Elspeth Dudgeon, who's listed in the cast as "John" Dudgeon (creepy character!) and "seemingly harmless" psychopath and pyromaniac Saul Femm, played by Brember Wills.Boris Karloff deserves to be mentioned apart, who impersonates the scarred butler, Morgan, who lusts after Mrs. Waverton (Gloria Stuart), perhaps because she gets to wear a sexy 1930s low-cut dress, the type which pre-Code Jean Harlow wore.Whale's direction is excellent.
The cast is chock full of stars - Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Raymond Massey - and wonderful supporting character actors like Ernest Thesiger and Eva Moore, Brember Wills and the brilliant gender bending turn from Elspeth Dudgeon.
It's a masterpiece from start to finish, a brilliant comedy of manners, an atmospheric and spooky tribute to the 'old dark house' genre (of which "The Bat Whispers" is another favorite), and a film that is so expertly photographed by Arthur Edeson ("The Maltese Falcon", "Casablanca", that is so brilliantly directed by the legendary James Whale, that is such a riot throughout that I find it hard to believe that anyone could possibly dislike this film.Expect a pure horror film and you might be disappointed.
We have learned as we went along the burdens the Femm family bore and by this time we have experienced all of the major human emotions through the experiences of the impressive cast (among them Ernest Thesiger, Raymond Massey, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and Gloria Stuart, who 65 years after The Old Dark House was released, would become famous to a new generation of viewers with her wonderful appearance in 1997's Titantic).
Horace Femm warns about Morgan's violent drunken temper, putting everyone on edge; meanwhile the dark mood hanging over the house begins to unnerve the guests.Fans of modern 'strangers in an old house' horror films will probably wonder what all the fuss is about in this film, where very little seems to happen for quite a long time apart from people talking in the middle of a storm.
Predictably creaky thriller from 1932, although not quite as dated as one might suspect; the cast (including Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Raymond Massey, and Melvyn Douglas--all looking so young!) certainly makes it interesting, and there are several welcomed bits of tongue-in-cheek humor.
James Whale's country house mystery (which seems to have had more than a passing influence on the Rocky Horror Show!) gets its unfortunates in from the rain, wind, and landslides, into the house of the weird Femm family and their drunken butler Morgan.The family are close to caricature at times - the sullen sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) who is conveniently deaf when it suits her and oppressively moral; the camp and nervous brother Horace (wonderfully played by the snipey Ernest Thesiger); the high-voiced Sir Roderick, the bed-bound patriarch (played by a woman and credited as a man); and the nutter in the attic, brother Saul (an unnerving performance from Brember Wills).Morgan is of course Boris Karloff, mute, resentful, and dangerous.
However even he is capable of some tenderness, as is seen in his interaction with Saul late in the film.The visitors are variable - Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart are OK but a little stodgy as the young Waverton couple; Melvyn Douglas plays the joker Penderel, who has a line for everything; Charles Laughton (a Yorkshireman in real life) plays a Lancashire self-made businessman; Lilian Bond plays a chorus girl tagging along with the industrialist who falls (improbably) for Penderel.As a story, The Old Dark House falls flat.
B. Priestley's novel "Benighted" and takes place over the course of one stormy night when a group of travellers, (Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart, Melvyn Douglas Charles Laughton and Lilian Bond), are stranded in the crumbling old house of the title with its very weird inhabitants, the Femms, (Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Brember Wills and their 102 year old father played by Elspeth Dudgeon, but credited as John Dudgeon, as well as their mute brute of a butler played by Boris Karloff, sans the Boris in the credits).
James Whale directed this film about five travelers(played by Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Lillian Bond, Raymond Massey, and Gloria Stuart) who escape from a bad storm by entering the title dwelling, which belongs to the decidedly unusual Femm family, composed of a quarreling brother and sister, very old grandfather upstairs, and a pyromaniac named Saul locked away in the attic!
I had watched the other three James Whale horror films - FRANKENSTEIN (1931), THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) - several times during my childhood, but THE OLD DARK HOUSE had always eluded me.
Of course, being largely confined to a single bleak setting, it lacks both the visual splendor of the two Frankenstein films and the optical tricks of THE INVISIBLE MAN - thus appearing decidedly low-key, even uneventful (a spoof on plot-heavy "old dark house" films which deliberately contrives to have very little going on - until the bravura finale!), but it more than makes up for this with the many vivid characterizations and exquisite performances, Whale's stylized but extremely confident direction, marvelous production design and camera-work and the brilliant, endlessly quotable dialogue.The strangeness of the setting and the offbeat characters which inhabit the place (particularly Boris Karloff's mute butler Morgan and Brember Wills' unforgettable pyromaniac Saul) elicits a disturbing aura that's difficult to shake off and quite unusual for the time.
Still, it's one of the most remarkable ever assembled for one film: Karloff (Morgan may not be an exactly juicy role, but Jack Pierce gives him a memorable 'look' nonetheless), Melvyn Douglas (who followed his role here with a similar one in next year's THE VAMPIRE BAT - partly shot on the same sets!), Raymond Massey (his Hollywood debut), Charles Laughton (ditto), Thesiger (his second most memorable film role), Gloria Stuart (quite sexy on account of this being a pre-Code film, and a more rewarding role for her than that in THE INVISIBLE MAN) and Eva Moore (like Thesiger, hilarious - especially during the unforgettable dinner sequence - but also convincingly menacing towards Stuart).
Even the lesser known actors namely Elspeth Dudgeon (credited as John Dudgeon [!] and, like Thesiger, she also appears in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN - Massey and Stuart's visit to the asexual patriarch Roderick Femm could well be my favorite sequence in the entire film), Lilian Bond (making for a rather charming heroine as opposed to playing the dumb stereotype) and Brember Wills (truly one of the unsung great villains of the silver screen) leave an indelible impression.The film plays out like a stage play, but Whale's inventiveness (including odd images such as a close-up of water dripping down the back of Raymond Massey's neck and the distorted reflection of a rambling Eva Moore) and the assured lighting keeps theatricality at bay (discounting the various eccentric characterizations, of course).
As he did with THE INVISIBLE MAN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Whale injects much humor into a menacing situation.There are two teams of actors: the travelers, a run-of-the-mill collection consisting of a bickering young couple (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart), their happy-go-lucky friend (Melvyn Douglas), later joined by an alcoholic businessman and his chorus girl companion (Charles Laughton and Lillian Bond).
Even though it does not quite reach the brilliance of Whale's three other Universal Horror masterpieces, "The Old Dark House" is an eerie highly original film with great characters and brilliant performances that is downright ingenious in many aspects.
Three travellers—Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) and their friend Penderel (Melvyn Douglas)—are driving through a storm on their way to Shrewsbury when they find themselves having to take refuge in a remote Welsh house inhabited by Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) and their dumb butler Morgan (Boris Karloff).
This makes the movie uneven, but it also adds a refreshing element of unpredictability.The cast includes a very young Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas and Gloria Stuart, and, at the time the closest thing to a big star thanks to his performance in "Frankenstein" a year earlier, Boris Karloff as a horny, hirsute and menacing butler.
It's also notable for being Karloff's first credited leading role (although he was in Frankenstein prior to this, he was not listed in the credits).The story basically revolves around a group of vacationing friends who get trapped amid a landslide and flood, which forces them to stop at an old house, inhabited by a secretive family with a dark past, to ask for help.Said inhabitants are an odd bunch to say the least....they aren't very hospitable, offer warnings...and seem to be hiding something sinister.Next a showgirl and her sugar daddy show up at the door in a similar predicament (as to provide an oppourtunity to tie in a romance angle, and a little comic relief).The remainder of the film has Karloff wooing the young gold digger; trying to discover what this family is trying to keep locked away and hidden; and of course....attempting to escape with their lives.But the whole thing just plods along without really engaging you much....and the way the whole romance angle (which culminates with a f*cking marriage proposal....after knowing each other for half a night haha) plays out is just ridiculous.
"The Old Dark House" is one of those films that remains a classic with each viewing.The cast,direction, script and photography are exceptional.There are many amusing moments along the way and in typical James Whale fashion.With actors like Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart, Ernest Thesiger and others, you couldn't ask for a more heavyweight cast.
As a violent storm rages, five travellers in a remote part of Wales take refuge at a creepy looking mansion that's home to the "odd" Femm family...Weird, exciting and positively funny haunted house film with a top cast that's directed by one of Horror's greatest directors, James Whale.
The first reuniting of director James Whale and newly-anointed-star Boris Karloff after the success of their "Frankenstein" (1931), "The Old Dark House" is quite a different piece of horror than their landmark 1931 production.
More important methinks is that this is also the first film where Whale introduced camp in his horror films--the kind of dark humor that would be expanded in his subsequent masterpieces "The Invisible Man" (1933) and "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935).Although four of the five guests to the house would one day bring eight Oscar nominations and three awards with them, for Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart, and everyone is the focus of the narrative at one time or another, it's the permanent residents that steal the show here.
The characters spend an eventful 72 minutes of screen time learning the secrets of the Femm family...and avoiding the gaze of towering, scarred, bearded butler Morgan (top-billed Boris Karloff), a patently ominous type.The incredible cast also includes Melvyn Douglas as charming ne'er-do-well Bill Penderel, Charles Laughton as the hearty Sir William Porterhouse, lovely ladies Gloria Stuart and Lilian Bond, Raymond Massey as Stuarts' cranky husband, and the memorable Elspeth Dudgeon (a 61 year old woman playing a 102 year old man).
The Old Dark House (1932) its probably among my favorite horror films from Universal, it has a great cast playing interesting likable characters, and a great director who makes everything work.The horror element in this film its quite effective, its eerie and creepy, but even if it didn't have those horror elements to it the movie would have been worth watching, is just fun to listen to these wonderful characters talk, the writing is quite clever and develops the story in such a way that it keeps you interested and engrossed.
James Whale's The Old Dark House provides his Frankenstein star, Boris Karloff, another iconic role.
It's one of the more memorable performances from the early 30s.I'm also a fan of the way James Whale filmed The Old Dark House.
Every cliché known to horror films and a generous amount of humor can be found in James Whales' THE OLD DARK HOUSE--with a cast that includes GLORIA STUART, BORIS KARLOFF, MELVYN DOUGLAS, RAYMOND MASSEY, LILLIAN BOND and scene-stealer ERNEST THESIGER as the host who gives a strange welcome to travelers seeking shelter from a storm.The storm effects last throughout the movie with lots of thunder and lightning and too much of the film takes place amid very dark shadows, lit supposedly by candelight.