“Have a Potato.”
Watching Bride of Frankenstein for the Canon this week put me in the mood for another classic James Whale picture featuring Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger.
The Old Dark House was one of the few Universal horror movies that I never got a chance to see as a kid. Unlike the classic monster films – your Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman etc. – The Old Dark House wasn’t constantly re-issued or shown on TV. I knew about it – a James Whale horror film with Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger was relevant to my interests – but I never ran across a copy. Even when I was scouring conventions for bootleg versions of unreleased films (I may still have a VHS of Vampyr somewhere) I could never find a copy of The Old Dark House. At some point I gave up looking.
The film had once been considered a “lost” film, like London After Midnight, but was rediscovered and first restored in the late 1960’s, so it was available. You would have thought I’d have been able to find a copy somewhere since then.. Alas, it wasn’t until recently, when the film got a 4k restoration, that I finally got to see it for the first time.
The Medium
I watched The Old Dark House streaming on Tubi – it looks very good and is probably from the recent restoration. It’s also available for subs on Apple TV and can be purchased or rented at most of the online streaming outlets. A number of Blu-ray releases now exist as well, including from the Cohen Group and Kino Lorber, and I’ll probably pick one up at some point.
The Movie
It was a dark and stormy night… Yeah, that’s how this is going to go, so get ready. It was a dark and stormy night when Phil and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) and their friend Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) – Lost Generation members all – found themselves stranded on mountain roads. The only shelter? That spooky house with a single light still on in the fury of the elements.
Now this is no ordinary spooky house – it’s a rambling pile of ancient stone that looks like it could barely stand up under its own weight, much less the impact of a storm that seems to be tearing down half the mountain. It’s foreboding enough that Phil actually opines that the group should move on, despite a landslide nearly knocking their vehicle off the rutted and washed-out road.
Cooler – or more foolish – heads prevail however, and soon they’re huddled in the entryway, knocking on the door. Finally, someone answers and it’s Boris F#@king Karloff and why they don’t run screaming at this point I really don’t understand. This is Morgan, the hulking, horrifying butler – scarred and brooding and completely unintelligible. “Even Welsh shouldn’t sound like that!” one of the group says.
Morgan ushers our bedraggled trio into the House, and we’re quickly introduced to Horace Femm – a spindly and nervous Ernest Thesiger, managing somehow to be both camp and sinister in equal measure. He welcomes them in with the first of a long line of darkly comedic pronouncements as he holds up several roses. “My sister was on the point of arranging these flowers.” He smiles, then tosses them into the fireplace. When his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) arrives, we can sympathize a bit with his disdain – she’s a squinting, shrill, overbearing gargoyle of a woman prone to announcing “no beds!” at the top of her voice whenever the mood strikes.
Even by 1930’s standards The Old Dark House is a little stiff and formal, especially early on when it truly feels like a stage production. People enter stage left and right, there are pauses, as if for laughter or applause, and the dialogue, while sharp and witty in spots, feels almost stilted in the early going.
Once Rebecca takes Margaret deeper into the house in order to change, things begin to take on a darker tone. After telling the nonplussed city girl about her (now dead) immoral sister and her 102-year-old father, bedridden in a room upstair, she adopts a more accusing, judgmental tone. “Fine stuff,” she says, while feeling the fabric of Margaret’s evening dress, “but it will rot.” Then she lays a hand on Margaret’s chest. “Finer stuff still, but it’ll rot, too.” Later she pronounces that Morgan is the absolute devil when he drinks, and he only drinks during storms like this.
Checkhov’s Butler will have to wait, however. First, there’s an awkward dinner scene, with way too many pickled onions and conversation quickly blunted by Horace’s dismissive and hilarious “have a potato.” This is interrupted by yet more guests seeking shelter – the boistrous and brash Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his companion Gladys (Lillian Bond). Their entry leads to more pronouncements of “no beds” and “have a potato” from the Femms.
The new characters bring an infusion of energy into the movie and things start to feel more grounded and realistic. (Well, for a 1930’s era movie, anyway.) Sir William is a self-made man and proud of it, but his pursuit of wealth is rooted in personal tragedy. Gladys is a showgirl and straightforward (in this pre-Hays Code movie) about selling her companionship for money. She’s a sharp cookie, however, and her insight into Penderel’s cynicism and disaffection results in a mutual circling that eventually leads to intimate conversation in the garage over a bottle of brandy.
There’s a growing sense of unease as the movie progresses, despite these distractions. Morgan hovers uncomfortably close to Margaret, shadows move on their own, and Horace is strangely reluctant to climb the stairs beyond the second floor. Finally, the power goes out and the (truly) loaded butler begins his violent rampage. A demented giggle floats down from the top floor and a wizened, bedridden figure whispers gleefully about dangerous family secrets.
Somehow this light ‘dark house’ comedy has morphed into a truly horrifying tale about a twisted family and dark, demented violence! There are fights, flames and a fantastically tense conversation between a madman and an increasingly desperate Penderel. Not everyone will make it out of the Old Dark House alive.
Despite the almost artificial feel to the opening scenes, The Old Dark House really does ramp up the horror as it progresses. It impresses with sharp dialogue, fun – if campy – characters, and the framing, pacing and lighting one expects from the man who brought us Frankenstein. I have a feeling this is a film that will actually improve with repeat viewings as it’s deceptively light in spots. What I find myself remembering, though, are those shadows, that hand on the railing, the teeth on the throat, and the endless rain and wind that serves as the soundtrack to a creepy old house and its creepier denizens.
The Bottom Line
The Old Dark House is one of those seminal films that so embodies the type of movie it created that it becomes a cliché. Though ‘old dark house’ movies had been made before – The Cat and the Canary, and The Bat, for instance – they’d most often been played for laughs, the sort of ‘chased through cobwebbed corridors’ film that Scooby-Doo would turn into shtick. Like Friday the 13th would for slashers decades later, The Old Dark House would take its format and distil it into the template by which all later versions would be defined. You can draw a line directly from this movie about a twisted, secretive family in a crumbling rural house and find films as different as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre somewhere along its length.
Well worth checking out – especially if you love those old Universal chillers.
Note: The Old Dark House was remade in 1963 by William Castle and starred Tom Poston and Janette Scott. Reviews aren’t great, but I should probably see it at some point, if only for the novelty of seeing Poston in a lead role.
