THE OLD DARK HOUSE
US, 1932, 70 minutes, Black and white.
Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Lillian Bond, Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart.
Directed by James Whale.
The Old Dark House is based on a novel by J.B. Priestley. Along with The Good Companions and When We Are Married, The Old Dark House has had several versions for cinema and television.
The film is set in Wales, various travellers meeting at a gloomy old house – and being terrorised. This was the basis for many a film including such Bob Hope vehicles as The Ghost Breakers and The Cat and the Canary.
While the film creaks, coming from the early sound era, it has a very strong cast led by Boris Karloff who had been directed by James Whale in Frankenstein the previous year and was to be in Bride of Frankenstein in 1935. Ernest Thesiger also appeared in these films. Melvyn Douglas was emerging as a romantic lead and had a successful career for many decades including two Oscars for best supporting actor in Hud, 1963, and Being There in 1979. Charles Laughton was to win the Oscar the following year for The Private Life of Henry VIII. Raymond Massey was also to emerge on screen as a strong hero, portraying Abraham Lincoln, or a villain as in Arsenic and Old Lace. He appeared in many good films including East of Eden. Of interest, Gloria Stuart appears in the film – and was to have a career until the year 2000 including being the old lady in James Cameron’s Titanic, 1997.
British director James Whale went to Hollywood and made a film version of R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End. After Frankenstein and The Old Dark House he directed Bride of Frankenstein and the first version of Jerome Kern’s Showboat as well as The Man in the Iron Mask.
A biographical portrait of him was done by Bill Condon in the 1999 film Gods and Monsters, in which he was portrayed by Ian McKellen?.
1. Why is the film considered a horror classic? Its impact now, dated or fresh?
2. The film as an example of filmmaking in the early thirties on a small budget: sound techniques, artificial acts, atmosphere, horror techniques, editing?
3. The basic situation and its appeal to audiences to be scared?
4. The build-up to the approach to the house, the car, the passengers, driving, the storm?
5. The impact of the house, the way it was photographed, in the storm? A refuge and yet a house of horror? The impact of the owner with his very English manner, his gruff and rough sister. Boris Karloff as the butler and his scaring the women? Audience interest in and puzzle over these people and the house and its mystery?
6. The quality of the dialogue, the banal aspects, the humorous lines the irony?
7. Comment on the variety of style in the guests, their various types, men and women? Their interaction? Society types, middleclass and working types? The emphasis on the class differences?
8. The dinner sequences: the entertainment, interaction, the sinister butler?
9. How did the film continue to build up atmosphere, the preparation for the mystery, the story by the old father?
10. The mad brother and his behaviour? How skilful the presentation of madness, the plausibility of sanity, the firing of the house, death?
11. The variety of responses to the dangerous situations? People being locked and trapped in rooms? The danger of the storm? The fire? The fight with the mad brother?
12. How well did the film build up to a crisis? Audience participation in it?
13. The qualities of the film as exemplifying the horror genre? The appeal and the type of response?
