Not only is there an OLD DARK HOUSE, there's also a dark and stormy night outside said house, a heavy rain that causes mud slides and has turned the roads into quagmires. It's so bad that travelers Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) and Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) swallow their fears (how would YOU like it if your knock at the door of a scary old house was answered by Boris Karloff?) and seek refuge there. They are followed soon enough by portly and high-spirited Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and fiery young Gladys DuCane (Lilian Bond). Nobody in their right mind would consider spending a night in the spooky old place unless forced by the sharpest contingency. Nobody in their right mind, we soon learn, inhabits the house, either. It's the residence of the Femm family, aged siblings Horace and Rebecca (Ernest Thesiger and Eva Moore) and a brace of unseen, but not unheard, relatives locked in upper story rooms. Boris Karloff plays Morgan, a butler or sib (never explained either way), who's scarier than all get out.
THE OLD DARK HOUSE is a horror movie, of sorts. It doesn't indulge in splatter-gore or supernatural head-twisting to shock and thrill. Rather, it relies on high shadows and sardonic dialogue, strange characters and menacing situations. The movie contains no character stranger than Karloff's Morgan, a hulking mute brute glowering from behind a bolshie beard and a few deep and delicately placed scars painted in by Universal make-up genius Jack Pierce. Morgan develops an overarching attraction to pretty young Margaret Waverton. Director James Whale makes Margaret undergo the only costume change in the film, a move that accomplishes a number of things. Undressing down to her slip, Margaret is at once sexualized and made vulnerable. It gives deaf old Rebecca Femm the opportunity to deliver lines at once darkly comic, sardonic, and deeply disturbing. As Gloria Stuart, who recently played the 100-year-old survivor in TITANTIC, tells us on the easy and informal commentary track, Whale wanted her to appear a `flaming dagger' when Karloff chased her about the dark mansion, hence the pink Jean Harlow-ish silk gown. Rebecca Femm, fondling the gown's silk, declares "Fine stuff, but it'll rot." Touching the young woman's skin beneath the gown, she says "Finer stuff still, but it'll rot, too!" Whale intercuts the scene with images of Margaret and Rebecca and Margaret looking at herself in an old and distorting mirror. It's a brilliant sequence, transcending and enhancing the horror simultaneously.
THE OLD DARK HOUSE is filled with twisted, dark comedy and grand performances. Whale, of course, had earlier directed Karloff in FRANKENSTEIN, and would work yet again with him in a few years on THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Thesiger would join them as the demented Dr. Pretorius. If you've seen that movie and enjoyed its singular brand of humor, you'll enjoy THE OLD DARK HOUSE as well. HOUSE lacks BRIDE'S humanity, there are no noble monsters in this one, but its comedy is more finely honed and definitely of a darker hue. And the ensemble cast is as good as it gets. I loved this movie.
Included on the Image dvd is Gloria Stuart's informal and personal commentary, a nine-minute stills gallery (button free, it runs on its own) and an eight minute interview with director Curtis Harrington, who was a friend of Whale's and the man most responsible for preserving, and restoring, THE OLD DARK HOUSE as it lay mouldering in the Universal vaults in the 1960s.

What a great and weird film...scary, funny, unsettling, sophisticated. And the Femm family..."They were all godless here. They used to bring their women here - brazen, lolling creatures in silks and satins. They filled the house with laughter and sin, laughter and sin. And if I ever went down among them, my own father and brothers - they would tell me to go away and pray, and I prayed - and left them with their lustful red and white women." "The fact is, Morgan is an uncivilized brute. Sometimes he drinks heavily. A night like this will set him going and once he's drunk he's rather dangerous." "Have a potato?" Ernest Thesiger as Horace Femm is a movie unto himself. The film stars one of my favorite actors, Melvyn Douglas, as a skeptical, somewhat disallusioned and reluctant hero.

Three travelers, motoring through the Welsh mountains late at night, are caught in a cold, thundering downpour. Their map is useless, the road is getting washed out and they are lost. Then they see a light from a lonely hulk of a large stone house. They pull up and run to the door, knocking loudly. The door opens, slightly. Staring at them is an unkempt, bearded mute with a mutilated face. A reedy, unseen voice tells them to enter.

And that's just the first five minutes.

For the next hour we witness how these three travelers, Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas), his friend Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey) and Waverton's wife, Margaret (Gloria Stuart), plus two other lost souls, William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his companion, Gladys DuCane (Lillian Bond), deal with the eccentric and strange Femm family and the family's manservant, Morgan (Boris Karloff). The Femms and Morgan are more than eccentric; they can be unpleasant and dangerous. There's Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), skeletal, elderly and effete; his deaf and religiously fanatical sister, Rebecca (Eva Moore); their psychotic and murderous brother, Saul (Brember Wills) who must always be kept locked up; and their 102 year old aged father, Sir Roderick Femm, who is bed-ridden.

Most of the movie is shot in the great room of the Femm house or up the stairs. The only light is by candlelight, the fireplace or dim electric light while it lasts. Shadows are everywhere, dark shadows that can hide more than secrets. And throughout the long night the rain keeps pouring down.

Does anyone die? Well, one. Is this a Boris Karloff monster movie? Nope. Karloff as Morgan plays an important role, but the movie isn't about him. The movie is about style. It's indirect and clever and at times it is very amusing. Certainly the cast couldn't have been improved upon, especially the actors playing the unnerving Femm siblings.

The movie, in my view, holds up very well. The DVD picture and audio have been restored.

I bought the DVD edition of this film, here at Amazon, three or four years ago, a great buy by all means, and it's became a favourite film.

It seems that the film's rights were sold by Universal Pictures to Columbia Pictures, when they made an (inferior) remake in 1963, directed by William Castle (another favourite of mine). The copy I bought is the one issued by KINO-thanks a million to KINO.

"The Old Dark House" is one of director James Whale's most offbeat films along with "Bride of Frankenstein" (IMHO his masterpiece). It's based on the J.B. Priestley novel and it was filmed during the Pre-Code Era.

I'd say it's a mixture of horror film, spoof and black comedy/humor...in some aspects it's related to "Arsenic and Old Lace", although it has a "darker mood". By the way, both Raymond Massey and Boris Karloff act in the film; Karloff played the role of Jonathan Brewster (from "Arsenic and Old Lace") on the Stage and Massey played it on-screen.

In a very stormy night, a group of travelers find shelter in an eerie and scary welsh manor, inhabited by the "weird" Femm family, and there begins a quick chain of events (the film lasts only 72 minutes) which last until the very end of the film.

The weary and wet travelers include Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart (who was nominated for an Oscar for her role of "old" Rose in the 1997 Blockbuster "Titanic" and looks ravishing in this film) as a married couple who are traveling through the country with happy-go-lucky friend Mr. Penderel, played by Melvyn Douglas.

Other travelers who arrive to this Huge House, are Charles Laughton, playing a rich businessman of humble origins with his lover, Lillian Bond, who's great and very sexy in her role of a joyous chorus-girl.

Then we have the Femms: Religion fanatic Rebecca Femm, who has an obsession with "sinners", expertly played by sinister-looking Eva Moore; her wishy-washy brother Horace Femm, played by the great Ernest Thesiger, who impersonated "Dr. Pretorius" in "Bride of Frankenstein"; 102 years old Sir Roderick Femm, who is played by actress Elspeth Dudgeon, who's listed in the cast as "John" Dudgeon (creepy character!) and "seemingly harmless" psychopath and pyromaniac Saul Femm, played by Brember Wills.

Mention apart deserves Boris Karloff, who impersonates the scarred butler, Morgan, who lusts after Mrs. Waverton (Gloria Stuart), perhaps because she gets to wear a sexy 1930s low-cut dress, the type which used to wear Pre-Code Jean Harlow.

Horror fans, Pre-Codes film buffs, this one's for you.

The DVD edition includes two audio-commentaries by Gloria Stuart and by James Curtis (author of James Whale's Biography) and a short-filmed interview by Curtis Harrington, who tells us how he rescued this film from Universal's Vaults, from permanent oblivion and ultimate destruction.

In the 30's and 40's there arose a sub-genre of horror films that would be come to known as "old dark house" thrillers. The plots of these films varied slightly but always involved a group of people gathering at a creepy old house or mansion. Perhaps for a party or reading of a will and then strange things ensued in the house.

This film was not the first, but it became perhaps the definitive work. Directed by James Whale who also directed Frankenstein and Bride of FRankenstein, whale would be reuited with his Frankenstein star, Boris Karloff. This movie was thought to be long lost until a copy was found and restored in the late 1960's.

The story concerns 5 travellers who must take refuge in a creepy old Welsh estate when they are caught in a terrible storm. The Guests include Phillip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) their travelling partner Roger Penderal (Melvyn Douglas) and Sir William and his friend Gladys Perkins (Charles Laughton and Lillian Bond).

The house is inhabited by a family that would make the Addam's family look normal by comparison. There is the matriarch Rebecca Femm...a hell-fire and brimstone religious zealot with disdain for the female guests especially. Then there is her brow-beaten, timid, prim and proper brother Horace (played deliciously by Ernest Thesiger). Upstairs is their aging father sir Roderick...bed-ridden and living in fear. Then there is whatever lies behind the locked and bolted door upstairs where Horace refuses to go.

Karloff gets top billing even though he has no dialog. In one of make-up artist Jack Pierce's greatest works, Karloff is almost unrecognizable under a thich mat of black hair, thick black beared, and scarred face as the hulking, brute of a butler named Morgan. Karloff merely grunts his way through the role and menaces Gloria Stuart at every turn.

The movie is thick with terror and threats as the storm deepens, the lights go out, and people begin disappearing at every turn. Douglas and Laughton throw themselves into their roles and seem to be enjoying things at the expense of the rest. Stuart does a great job as the threatened damsel and is quite beautiful although Massey is rather dull as her husband.

Whale gets in his usual bits of humor under the radar, such as when Gladys who travels with Sir William tells Penderal that William give her money but "doesn't expect anything" in return. And that he want's people to think of him as being "gay". And of course, laughton in real life was gay even though he was married to Elsa Lanchester.

The DVD is a good Transfer by Kino although the sound is a bit dim. The DVD comes with two commentary tracks, one by surviving star gloria Stuart, who although in her 90's still vividly recalls the details of making the movie.

Highly recommended!

The Old Dark House is not your orthodox horror movie. Far from it. The real specter here is secret queer vein running through the story. While heterosexuals may see this movie as a strange horror movie (there are no real monsters or ghosts) the real ghost is the specter of homosexuality. The queer in-joke of the family Femm of the titular home. The head of the Femm Family Roderick is played by actress Elspeth Dudgeon which is just the pinnacle of the queerness abound. Boris Karloff's psychotic Morgan who is in a deadly attraction to Melyvn Douglas as Roger Penderel. Their elaborate courtship is fraught with sexual tension with homicide as the only climax possible. Ernest Thesiger chews the scenery shamelessly as the strange and effeminate Horace Femm. Charles Laughton enters as the most unlikely heterosexual man.