#192: The Old Dark House
An unnerving predecessor to everything from And Then There Were None to Texas Chainsaw Massacre
This review was originally posted to Twitter on December 24, 2019.
Initial release: October 20, 1932
Director: James Whale
Universal Studios is known for its classic Universal Horror pantheon: film adaptations of Dracula, Frankenstein, plus movies starring mummies, wolfmen, and fishmen. But that’s not all: a forgotten part of Universal’s iconic 1930s horror cycle is this tale of isolation and a twisted family, setting the stage for films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Based on a 1927 novel titled Benighted, a married couple and their friend are on a road trip through rural Wales when a fearsome nighttime storm brings a landslide nearly atop their heads. They come upon a lonely-looking manor, and decide to stop for shelter.
They’re greeted at the door by a massive, scarred, half-mute bearded butler named Morgan (Boris Karloff, who’s even less vocal than his role as Frankenstein’s monster.) While Horace, the male head of the household is welcoming, his sister Rebecca, who really runs the place, is less so.
Morgan is menacing and brutish, but leaves the group alone as he serves dinner. Before long, another pair arrive, a young businessman and his lady friend. They soon take to conversing by the fire, but as the night wears on, the family’s sinister secrets begin to arise. It’s clear that there is something off about this eccentric little clan, or perhaps more specifically certain members of it. Horace and Rebecca are relatively normal, but their 102-year-old father (played by a woman, Elspeth Dudgeon!) warns them of Saul, the dangerously crazy other brother. While this film isn’t the first to introduce the concept of a creepy old dark mansion that isn’t explicitly haunted — that’s probably 1925’s The Monster starring Lon Chaney — it’s probably the most important example of it, giving the genre its name as well as codifying the comedic elements that often appear in stories like these. That’s not to say the film is funny the whole way through; when Morgan goes on a rampage, or when Saul gets loose, it’s honestly a disturbing film in many ways. It’s easy to see how a film like this would inform the likes of the family in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.
This is a splendidly acted and shot chiller, which makes sense given that James Whale also directed Frankenstein the previous year — and the Whale/Karloff collaboration pays off once more here. Melvyn Douglas plays a good comedic foil for the rest of the film. Some boring cishet romance nonsense doesn’t take away from a quality comedy/horror film. The Old Dark House wasn’t successful at the time, even for a while being considered lost media; but its influence has nevertheless been seen in films throughout the following decades, and it easily deserves a place among Universal’s more monstrous films.
