The Old Dark House (1932)

ridiculous rating

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It's a funny experience when a film evokes déjà vu, only to realize the source of the déjà vu is, itself, intended to itself incite déjà vu. Picture this: a miserable storm sweeps a carload of normal people, as earnest as they are bedraggled, into taking refuge at a spooky old manor, only to be besieged and coveted by the prurient, camp Gothic inmates. But don't do the Time Warp again just yet: at the core of this Russian Doll of horror, pastiche, and dark humour lurks James Whale's oft-overlooked but seldom forgotten mini- masterpiece – The Old Dark House. As Poe-faced as if the script had been quoth by the Raven itself, Whale's film is, if not the granddaddy of most horror clichés, then at least the wry, drunken great-uncle. And, weathered as it is, time has been kind to this one, making The Old Dark House a creepy, clever, and sordidly amusing addition to the pantheon of horror classics. Singing not included; pelvic thrusting barely omitted. If nothing else, The Old Dark House makes for a fascinating transitional tonal touch-point for Whale, one of the defining masters of classical horror. The film isn't as overtly satirical and camp as Whale's later monster mash-terpieces, The Invisible Man and, especially, Bride of Frankenstein, but it certainly shows him creeping in that direction, with a persistent snicker of irreverent naughtiness under its raspy breath. This isn't to say the film is an outright farce - indeed, Whale runs the gamut of thematic leitmotifs that would proceed to become preoccupations for decades of horror to follow: dogmatic religion, lurid sexuality, class discrepancies, and shunned, disabled family members. Yet, his film crackles with an invigorating, nervy energy, and his characters banter with zingy, pre-screwball fury, with several double-entendres pushing the boundaries of Hays Code knuckle-rapping with cheeky aplomb (maybe Whale assumed American censors wouldn't understand them through the Welsh accents?). His setup is certainly foreboding enough, with the harried car ride prelude across flooding, lightning-scarred Welsh countryside a perfectly ominous amuse-bouche for the sinister, Gothic castle theatrics to come. Whale's flair for atmospheric mise-en-scène is superb, peppering the film with marvelously spooky flourishes and Expressionist lighting keeping the audience biting their nails throughout (one bit, where a woman makes shadow puppets on the wall with her hands, only to have a dark figure emerge from the shadow, is a jump scare for the ages). But Whale bides his time, keeping his pacing cunningly slow and allowing his film to froth at the mouth with looming tension.Whale's film is also remarkable for the unprecedented access the audience is given to his cabal of characters. Too many horror films introduce characters as disposable (and disposed of) props, but Whale treats the first half of his potboiler like a theatre piece, as the growing crowd of storm refugees and reluctant hosts meet, and poke hopes, dreams, prejudices, and – mostly – fears out of each other. Whale's ensemble rises to the challenge, delivering genuinely well-crafted and compelling characters, particularly the suave, sharp-tongued Melvyn Douglas, the tough but chipper Lilian Bond, and, especially, Charles Laughton, who gives a remarkably heartfelt performance, his effete bluster whisking away to reveal a man plagued by terrible loneliness underneath. His monologue, revealing his bitter turn to capitalism as a means of finding purpose and escaping past tragedy, is strangely tragic and surprisingly moving amidst the film's tongue-in-cheek tone, and a curious counterpoint to Depression-era cinema's usual propensity for portraying the super-rich as vacuous twits. Ernest Thesiger and Eva Moore deliver masterclasses of brooding as the manor's sister tenants, while title star Boris Karloff is genuinely terrifying, his performance so much more affecting than the mere rage-ravaged riff on his Frankenstein lumbering and grunting you'd initially expect. Finally, Brember Wills gives a performance so deft and daringly over-the-top that he turns horror conventions on their head even while pushing new boundaries of skin-crawling, especially for the 1930s. Whale's quieter companion piece to his more famous forays into the macabre may tip the cap more at Hitchcock than Mary Shelley, but ably continues his macro theme of humans being far more terrifying than any conventional 'monsters.' The Old Dark House may be humbler in scope, and somewhat more tonally imbalanced than some of its cohort of horror classics (including a swooning romantic subplot that's altogether too saccharine and sincere to play amidst its sardonic surroundings). Still, at a mere 72 minutes, the film is as concise and sardonically sinister as it is creepy, and still a slice of spine-tingling fun for an eerie, rainy night. -8/10

This was quite an experience, I wasn't expecting anything less from the great James Whale. 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. The performances, the mystery, the suspense, the horror, the thrills, an eerie mood and a great set are what makes this film great.I definitely recommend it.

The delivery of some of the characters is somewhat stilted possibly owing to the sound recording equipment requiring slow and distinct dialogue or that some of the actors were still transitioning to sound film acting. Nevertheless, once you are drawn into it, the film is entertaining on a number of levels. It is a weird combination of horror parody, social commentary and character study. The scene in which the old crone played you Eva Moore taunts the lovely Gloria Stuart about the fleeting nature of youth and youthful beauty is remarkable. "Fine stuff but it will rot!" I bet some of us are reminded of these words when we watch Stuart in her final film role as the old lady in "Titanic". I love how Ernest Thesiger invests the most benign phrases with a sense of foreboding and menace. He makes "Have a potato" and even "Good morning" sound serenely sinister. Lillian Bond is a joy. As a counterpoint to Stuart's classical beauty and nervousness, Bond's cheerful, cheeky, earthy and sensible working class girl shines.

I was about 12 years old when I first saw "The Old Dark House" at the Annex Theater on Manhattan's East Side. Which wouldn't be unusual except that within a few days, the Annex Theater had vanished. It never turned up again in an ad or movie listing. Which made it a curiously appropriate venue in which to watch one of the great horror movies of all time. The film opens on a car slogging through a torrential rainstorm whose occupants seek shelter in a lonely manse rather than risk plunging off a cliff. The people in the house are all mad. Ernest Thesiger is a menacingly genial host. His sister makes it clear that she hates visitors; "there are no beds" she keeps screeching. The butler, Morgan (Boris Karloff) is a mute servant who is only homicidal when he drinks. Which he does whenever there's a storm. Somewhere on the third floor, there's a locked door to keep a madman with a butcher knife from running loose. It's clear that the wayfarers,led by Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and Gloria Stuart may not live through the night. J.B. Priestly's screenplay is both literate and frightening while James Whale (of Frankenstein fame) turns up the terror with wonderfully skewed camera angles and effects. In short, "The Old Dark House" is a rarity...a genuine horror classic.