The Old Dark House ****½ (1932, Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart) – Classic Movie Review 1036

Ernest Thesiger: ‘My sister was on the point of arranging these flowers’ (chucks them in the fire). James Whale’s brilliant, renowned and honoured 1932 old dark comedy chiller film The Old Dark House is adapted from J B Priestley’s novel Benighted.

Director James Whale’s quite brilliant and deservedly renowned and honoured 1932 old dark comedy chiller film is adapted from J B Priestley’s novel Benighted (published in America as The Old Dark House).

In the story, two carloads of travellers (first Raymond Massey, Melvyn Douglas and Gloria Stuart, then Charles Laughton and Lillian Bond) beg for shelter from a driving storm at the Femm family mansion in Wales. Ernest Thesiger and Eva Moore also star as the crazy Femms, he splendidly camp and skeletal, she deaf and aggressive (‘no beds, they can’t have beds’).

Crazier still is Brember Wills as the mad brother Saul they have locked away upstairs, while wonderful Boris Karloff, now a top-billed star since his triumph Whale’s Frankenstein the previous year (during which time he had done another eight movies!), is their creepy mute, bearded butler Morgan, though infuriatingly this means he has no lines.

It is a ripe cast indeed, mostly imported from Britain (apart from Douglas and Stuart), along with director Whale, who had just scored such a monster triumph with his 1931 film Frankenstein.

Benn W Levy and R C Sherriff’s screenplay strips Priestley’s novel of its social comment, but keeps its spirit and witty dialogue and adds some shocks to keep it in the horror film area. Jokily, an actress (Elspeth Dudgeon) is cast as a croaky, whispy-bearded, 102-year-old bedridden Sir Roderick, but she is credited as John Dudgeon.

This flamboyant, bizarre and blackly comic story works on screen perfectly, just like a really weird dream. Thesiger has many of the best lines: ‘My sister was on the point of arranging these flowers’ (chucks them in the fire)… ‘We make our own electric light here, [lights flicker and extinguish], but we’re not very good at it.’

The Old Dark House was previewed in the US early July 1932 and all nine New York City daily newspapers reviewed the film positively. It was booked for three weeks at the Rialto Theatre in New York City, but after starting well in the first week of release audience turn-out dropped to less than half in its second week through negative word of mouth and the film was pulled after ten days.

However, the film did well in England and broke house records at London’s Capitol Theatre. It was re-issued in cinemas in 1939 but for many years it was considered a lost film.

Universal Studios lost the rights to the original story in 1957 and it was remade in a poor, updated version by director William Castle in 1962 for Hammer, The Old Dark House (release in 1963), with Tom Poston, Janette Scott and Robert Morley.

The Old Dark House is directed by James Whale, runs 74 minutes, is made and released by Universal, is written by Benn W Levy and R C Sherriff, based on J B Priestley’s novel Benighted, is shot in black and white by Arthur Edeson, is produced by Carl Laemmle Jr, is scored by Bernhard Kaun and Heinz Roemheld, and is designed by Charles D Hall.

The cast of ten are Boris Karloff (billed as ‘KARLOFF’) as Morgan, the Femm family’s alcoholic mute butler, Melvyn Douglas as war veteran Roger Penderel, Raymond Massey as Philip Waverton, Gloria Stuart as Margaret Waverton, Philip’s wife, Charles Laughton as Sir William Porterhouse, Lilian Bond as chorus girl Gladys DuCane Perkins, Sir William’s girlfriend, Ernest Thesiger as Horace Femm, the host of the house, Eva Moore as Rebecca Femm, Horace’s near-deaf religious fanatic sister, Brember Wills as the pyromaniac Saul Femm, brother of Horace and Rebecca, and Elspeth Dudgeon as Sir Roderick Femm (billed as ‘John Dudgeon’), the 102-year-old father of Horace, Rebecca and Saul.

Dudgeon was supposedly cast because Whale could not find a male actor who looked old enough for the role.

Director Curtis Harrington helped to prevent The Old Dark House from becoming a lost film, finding a print of the film in the vaults of Universal Studios in 1968 and persuading the George Eastman House film archive to finance a new duplicate negative.

James Whale is notably the director of Journey’s End (1930), Waterloo Bridge (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Show Boat (1936) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1939). Ian McKellen plays him in a biopic, Gods and Monsters (1998).

Whale is also the director of The Impatient Maiden (1932), The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933), By Candlelight (1933), One More River (1934), Remember Last Night? (1935), The Road Back (1937), The Great Garrick (1937), Sinners in Paradise (1938), Wives Under Suspicion (1938), Port of Seven Seas (1938), Green Hell (1940) and They Dare Not Love (1941).