The Old Dark House (1932)

The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932) It is a dark and stormy—one might say "dreadful"—night. Trying to negotiate the way to Shrewesbury amidst a blinding rain on a road prone to crippling muddiness and threatening landslides are Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey), his wife Margaret (Gloria Stuart...from Titanic?) and friend Roger Penerel (Melvyn Douglas), slap-dasherly young people without a care in the world, except for what little irritations cross their bourgeois path—like how full is the whiskey flask? On such a night, maps and directional instincts can become stymied. Finding a large, sturdy house (more importantly, the lights are on), they pull up and knock on the large and imposing door. They are allowed entrance by the master of the house, Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), self-described as "rather a nervous man" who allows his hulking man-servant, Morgan (Boris Karloff) to give them access from the deluge outside, although he is less welcoming than one might wish.

If he is reluctant, his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) is even less so. A bit of a religious-hysteric, she is more than a little bitter at her treatment within the family, feeling persecuted, and if her perception of her family is skewed, her reaction to outsiders, and, worse, these particularly un-devout young people is openly hostile. She has one bottom-line: "No BEDS!" She's probably fearing orgies under her roof.                                                          

The guests will have to be comfortable in the drawing room, although Margaret is soaked to the skin and insists on changing clothes, which she is allowed to do in one of the Femm bedrooms under Rebecca's watchful, judgmental eye, who tells a brief history of her treatment within the "sinful and godless" Femm family*, and revealing that the father of the Fenn's, 102 year-old Roderick Femm, is still alive and living in the house. Despite this one consideration, the Femm's are determined to keep the Waverton's and Penerel in the drawing room and discourage them from trying to access any other part of the house for their safety. They are particularly warned about Morgan, whom Horace describes as an "uncivilized brute" and "rather dangerous"—he has a tendency to drink a little and molest a lot. Femm fortunes evidently preclude them from hiring a replacement.

Just as the first guests are getting comfortable being uncomfortable at the Femm's, they are joined by two others: Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton), a genial and bellicose bloke, with his evening companion "Ducane"—a chorine whose real name is Sophie Perkins (Lillian Bond), who are far more free-spirited and liven things up a bit, but create a bit more frisson, adding a little more chaos in the mix bottled up in the barely-contained Femm house. Libations are provided and a dinner served, But on such a night, things can not go smoothly. The electricity goes out in the storm, and when Philip goes to retrieve an oil lamp from upstairs—Horace, it seems, is too scared to go—and he notices a couple of locked rooms, one of which has a voice coming from inside it.

Penerel and the chorus-girl start to get chummy, and the brute Morgan (it seems) has gotten into the liquor and he attacks poor Margaret the first chance she is alone. At this point, lines are drawn in the wood floors and the night becomes one of survival and the discovery of secrets that have been hidden away for years. And although it has all the trappings and tropes of a horror film, under Whale's direction there is a giddy, giggling sense of humor bubbling just under the surface that is campy and knows just how far to push the material as far as commentary and suggestiveness.

Whale is clearly having fun with the project (based on J.B. Priestly's 1927 novel "Benighted"), the second project he made after his success with Frankenstein, and although he turns down the German Expressionism he wrought in that film, the film is richly textured, not only between levels of light and dark in subject and dialogue, but also pictorially, thanks to his Frankenstein cinematographer Arthur Edeson, who would move from Universal to the Warner Brothers and make his mark on such films as The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. It appears to be a stepping-stone to the extreme arch-tone he took in his subsequent The Bride of Frankenstein.

The Old Dark House also marked the Hollywood debut of actor Charles Laughton, who would quite quickly rise in the ranks from talented character actor to star and eventually director. 

The Old Dark House is one of those wonders of the pre-Code era, where the subject matter could be broadened (as well as the moral implications of characters' actions), leaving audiences with endings with moral ambiguities, and troubling implications, rather than satiate them with happy endings. You could almost look at The Old Dark House as a hybrid of the horror, Romantic Gothic, and even noir genres to create an unsettling thrill-ride that leave one disturbed even after one has exited the theater.

The trouble with those pre-Code films, however, was that once the Hays Code came into play, many films, to ensure further booking into theaters, were censored, or even re-shot to meet the new stringent standards placed on movie entertainment. The ones which could not be "rehabilitated" were confined behind locked doors in the vaults of the studio and, in many cases, forgotten and abandoned.

The Old Dark House was considered a lost film until it was dug up from the Universal racks in 1968 and restored, saved from the depredations that time and its storage on flammable nitrate film would inflict on it. Rather than left to rot, it was exhumed, and another classic Horror film, one of its most curious and perverse entries, was saved from the grave.

*

"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!"
Director Whale goes to town during this sequence—probably because it's so talky—with distorted mirror and lens effects to disorient the viewer, and to add his own visual commentary on sister Rebecca's rant.