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The Old Dark House
That's my brother. You'll have to kill him.
1932
Review: January 19, 2010
Director: James Whale
Starring: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Lilian Bond, Ernest Thesiger
Delightful.
THE SETUP:
A bunch of people spend the night at… you guessed it.
DISCUSSION:
Last Saturday was the first serious winter storm here in New York, with cold rain turning to snow, and as fate would have it, one of our few remaining art theaters, Film Forum, was having a James Whale retrospective, with a double feature of this and Bride of Frankenstein. I had always heard that this film was worth seeking out, and the idea of sitting inside a warm theater watching old scary movies seemed like an ideal way to spend a wintry Saturday afternoon. And it was!
I don’t know the story of this film, but it’s one of Whale’s lesser-known and I believe less popular—he was trying to wiggle out of being typecast as the monster director—and was thought to be lost, until director Curtis Harrington found a print and issued it via Kino Video.
We open with this couple driving through Wales at night during a horrible rainstorm, made worse by the fact that their car apparently has no windows. In the back seat is Melvyn Douglas, who is relaxed and witty about the whole thing. The road behind them washes out in a mudslide [kind of a wowzer special effect for the day] and—they don’t react! It’s one of the many things that will be coming at you in the next 90 minutes where you’ll wonder if it was SUPPOSED to be funny, or just seems quaint and amusing to us now.
Anyway, they happen upon… a new, bright planetarium! No, what do you think? They knock at the door, and are eventually let in by Boris Karloff as Morgan, half-crazy goon who speaks in grunts. They barge in, saying they hate to be an imposition, but there you go, and are greeted by the nervous, angular Horace Femm, who is indeed a bit femme. His wailing hag of a sister soon comes down, shouting “No beds! No beds! They can’t have any beds!” to which Horace adds: “As my sister HINTS, there are no beds.” By now you may be giggling along at all the silliness, which is hard to describe as all the characters are just so odd, everyone’s behavior so bizarre [non sequiturs abound], and the tone of the film so arch. Soon the lights are flickering, and Horace says “We make our own electricity light here! …And we’re not very good at it.”
SPOILERS > > >
Soon another couple shows up, Charles Laughton as Mr. Porterhouse, with his mistress, Gladys. All guests are seated for a bizarre banquets in which Horace repeatedly urges them all to “Have a potato.” It’s very difficult to describe why all of this should be so funny, or even describe the meandering plot of the film, as it is filled with such minor incidents, but it’s all just so silly and super-serious it maintains a very appealing air of the absurd.
Soon the barest hint of a plot appears. Horace is going upstairs to get a lamp, when he is clearly too frightened of whatever is up there, and sends the hero guy and girl. They end up meeting this old bearded lady confined to her bed and locked in the room, who warns them about the OTHER person locked in a room upstairs, Morgan’s mad brother, Saul. Morgan, by the way, has gotten drunk, and you wouldn’t like him when he’s drunk.
On the way down, Horace tells hero guy that Morgan “has gone to let Saul out. Wait for him and kill him.” They go back downstairs, where Porterhouse beckons to one of the women: “Come in here!” [to a rear room]. “No, I’d rather stay!” she wails. “Okay, then stay,” he says, and slams the door in her face. Soon Saul is out and trying to set fire to the house [he ignites some curtains] and he and Pendrel [Melvyn] have a fight to the death. It’s only once it’s over and they’re acting like everything is fine that you think—but did anyone ever put out the fire?”
< < < SPOILERS END
This is just good fun for people who like very silly, old-fashioned good humor. It’s difficult to know how much is intended to be funny, apparently it was made as a comedy, but even so, I think at least fully half of the humor is unintentional, arising from some of the quaint conventions and necessary gaps in filmmaking and differences in acting. Nevertheless, rather than that feeling of "Oh, well I guess this is the best they could do for the time," one often has with watching early movies, here you find yourself saying "Oh, they knew what they were up to and this is really very clever and funny."
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Perfect for a rainy Saturday afternoon.
