Years
back, director Ridley Scott remarked of his 1979 visceral scare fest Alien “you know, it’s The Old Dark House”. Already legendary by Scott’s time yet largely
overlooked and then forgotten back in 1932, realisateur James Whale’s personal
favorite of his pictures based on the novel Benighted
by J.B. Priestley is one of the earliest examples of a straight-laced horror
film with a wicked streak of humor running through it.
Though
he was already considered a master in his own time after directing some of
Universal Studios’ greatest and most beloved monster movies of the 1930s
including but not limited to Frankenstein,
The Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, The Old Dark House tragically did not enjoy the same measure of
love as those aforementioned pictures did.
After
the rights to the film reverted to novelist Priestley who himself expressed
dismay over the final product due to the film’s sense of humor, filmmaker
William Castle mounted his own largely derided remake in 1963 and efforts were
then taken to bury the 1932 film from existence. Though filmmaker Curtis Harrington discovered
the original negative in 1968, the rights issues prevented the film from being
screened on television all the way through 1994 despite extensive restoration
efforts made to show the film again.
Finally
made available to the moviegoing public in commercial form once again in 2017
with a Cohen Media Group 4K restored blu-ray disc, modern moviegoers and fans
of the old Universal Horror movies now have a chance to indulge in one of the
studio’s most overlooked and celebrated offerings, one which took the “dark
house” tropes coined in Paul Leni’s The
Cat and the Canary and ran with them.
The
story is an exceedingly simple one concerning a group of friends who on a dark
and stormy night take refuge inside a gloomy looking old house. Inside the group finds three strange figures
running the home, wimpy Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), his spooky and pious
elder sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) and their frequently intoxicated and deformed
butler Morgan (Boris Karloff in one of his creepiest roles). Once inside the home, it quickly transforms
into a funhouse of horrors and witty one-liners which would no doubt forecast
the creation of television shows such as The
Munsters and The Addams Family.
What’s
most striking about The Old Dark House aside
from the film’s brilliant production design from Charles D. Hall of Frankenstein fame, is the film’s stellar
cast. Its rare, if ever, to get this
many major movie stars all in one horror picture, including future The Changeling star Melvyn Douglas,
Raymond Massey, future Titanic starlet
Gloria Stuart and the distinguished Charles Laughton in his first Hollywood
production. With a cast like this, the
picture soars instead of slumps, keeping the proceedings fresh and frequently
funny, allowing for the scares to sneak up on viewers rather than laughing away
the whole thing.
Boris
Karloff will forever be remembered by horror fans as Frankenstein’s monster or
as The Mummy when he wasn’t doing
crime pictures, but his disfigured mute butler here is only onscreen for a
fraction of the time as the previous pictures yet is ten times more
frightening. Take for instance, in true
pre-code fashion, a scene where the butler corners Gloria Stuart and chases her
around her room. In a succession of
close ups to Karloff’s scarred face, we catch a momentary glimpse of a grin
forming, suggesting in that moment far more dire thoughts than post-code films
would ever consider allowing.
Though
there isn’t anything overtly supernatural running through the mazelike house
which feels lifted right out of the waking nightmarishness of German
Expressionism, the dread and unease it’s soaked and dripping in is palpable and
not easy to look around. Thanks to a
years-and-years creative partnership with cinematographer Arthur Edeson who
also shot Frankenstein in addition to
such industry legends as The Thief of
Bagdad and The Big Trail in the
first 70mm widescreen film production, The
Old Dark House simply looks like a claustrophobic Hellhole slowly closing
in upon the film’s unlucky heroes. There's also extensive use of deep shadows and dark windy hallways to create a sense of creeping unease as if danger is lurking around every corner.
Upon
initial release, critics weren’t too kind to Whale’s spooky lark which had more
than a few tricks and surprises up its sleeves than the surrounding Universal
Horror pictures released around that time.
Variety, for instance, called the picture ‘inane’ and despite strong
reviews from the New York Times, negative word of mouth spread quickly among
moviegoers and the picture was withdrawn from circulation after only ten days
before studio heads saw fit to wash their hands of the picture completely in
1963.
Looking
back decades later after the negative was rediscovered, modern moviegoers have
since reversed themselves on James Whale’s film, citing it as his
quintessential cinematic achievement while pointing out the film’s uncanny
ability to make fun of dark house horror tropes as it serves them up, predating
the likes of Wes Craven’s Scream in
this sense. Though some elements have
indeed waned in effectiveness over time, many others haven’t including one
truly hair-raising surprise which is as scary in its minimalist approach as
that infamous shot of the xenomorph in Alien
peeking around the corner.
Of
the Universal Horror films produced at the time overseen by Carl Laemmle, Jr.,
best remembered for his issued warning precluding Frankenstein, The Old Dark
House is his masterpiece, a film well aware of the conventions of horror
which freely plays around with them, creating an experience that manages to be
both hilarious and frightening, sometimes both at the same time.
Because of the film’s consistent use of comedy
throughout the proceedings, it makes you the viewer let your guard down and
therefore more susceptible to having the daylights scared from you. All in all, this is one of the greatest
horror films of the 1930s, one which paved the way for decades upon decades of
creepy or haunted house thrillers to come!
--Andrew Kotwicki
