Copyright 12 October 1932 by Universal Pictures Corporation. New York opening at the Rialto: 27 October 1932. U.K. release: 21 October 1932 (sic). 6,451 feet. 71 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A charming young wastrel (Melvyn Douglas), a wealthy but rough-and-ready manufacturer (Charles Laughton) and his chorus-girl partner (Lilian Bond), plus a bickering married couple (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) are independently stranded one stormy night in Wales. They are forced to spend the night in a gloomy old mansion belonging to the weirdly eccentric Femm family who are somewhat at the mercy of their grimly menacing (if speechless) butler (Boris Karloff). As might be expected from Priestley and Sherriff, the bizarrely comic dialogue is even more fascinating than all the anticipated shocks and thrills. COMMENT: Sometimes referred to as the grandfather of all haunted house horrors, The Old Dark House is just one of quite a few well-stocked originals, including The Bat (1926) and The Cat and the Canary (1927). What it does offer is a superb gallery of interesting and fascinatingly off-beat characters, brilliantly brought to life here by an incredibly star-studded cast. It's virtually impossible to pick just who stands out from this richly diverse assembly, though I do have a soft spot for Gloria Stuart who was never more attractively photographed or handsomely attired. Karloff's fans will not be disappointed either.Tempting though it is to quote some of the racy dialogue and point out a few of the heart-stopping chills and surprises so effectively delivered by director James Frankenstein Whale and cameraman Arthur All Quiet on the Western Front (and later Casablanca) Edeson, I'll content myself by observing that, despite the hundreds of imitations that have since appeared, the original Old Dark House still packs at least five or six mighty good scares.

It's a funny experience when a film evokes déjà vu, only to realize the source of the déjà vu is, itself, intended to itself incite déjà vu. Picture this: a miserable storm sweeps a carload of normal people, as earnest as they are bedraggled, into taking refuge at a spooky old manor, only to be besieged and coveted by the prurient, camp Gothic inmates. But don't do the Time Warp again just yet: at the core of this Russian Doll of horror, pastiche, and dark humour lurks James Whale's oft-overlooked but seldom forgotten mini- masterpiece – The Old Dark House. As Poe-faced as if the script had been quoth by the Raven itself, Whale's film is, if not the granddaddy of most horror clichés, then at least the wry, drunken great-uncle. And, weathered as it is, time has been kind to this one, making The Old Dark House a creepy, clever, and sordidly amusing addition to the pantheon of horror classics. Singing not included; pelvic thrusting barely omitted. If nothing else, The Old Dark House makes for a fascinating transitional tonal touch-point for Whale, one of the defining masters of classical horror. The film isn't as overtly satirical and camp as Whale's later monster mash-terpieces, The Invisible Man and, especially, Bride of Frankenstein, but it certainly shows him creeping in that direction, with a persistent snicker of irreverent naughtiness under its raspy breath. This isn't to say the film is an outright farce - indeed, Whale runs the gamut of thematic leitmotifs that would proceed to become preoccupations for decades of horror to follow: dogmatic religion, lurid sexuality, class discrepancies, and shunned, disabled family members. Yet, his film crackles with an invigorating, nervy energy, and his characters banter with zingy, pre-screwball fury, with several double-entendres pushing the boundaries of Hays Code knuckle-rapping with cheeky aplomb (maybe Whale assumed American censors wouldn't understand them through the Welsh accents?). His setup is certainly foreboding enough, with the harried car ride prelude across flooding, lightning-scarred Welsh countryside a perfectly ominous amuse-bouche for the sinister, Gothic castle theatrics to come. Whale's flair for atmospheric mise-en-scène is superb, peppering the film with marvelously spooky flourishes and Expressionist lighting keeping the audience biting their nails throughout (one bit, where a woman makes shadow puppets on the wall with her hands, only to have a dark figure emerge from the shadow, is a jump scare for the ages). But Whale bides his time, keeping his pacing cunningly slow and allowing his film to froth at the mouth with looming tension.Whale's film is also remarkable for the unprecedented access the audience is given to his cabal of characters. Too many horror films introduce characters as disposable (and disposed of) props, but Whale treats the first half of his potboiler like a theatre piece, as the growing crowd of storm refugees and reluctant hosts meet, and poke hopes, dreams, prejudices, and – mostly – fears out of each other. Whale's ensemble rises to the challenge, delivering genuinely well-crafted and compelling characters, particularly the suave, sharp-tongued Melvyn Douglas, the tough but chipper Lilian Bond, and, especially, Charles Laughton, who gives a remarkably heartfelt performance, his effete bluster whisking away to reveal a man plagued by terrible loneliness underneath. His monologue, revealing his bitter turn to capitalism as a means of finding purpose and escaping past tragedy, is strangely tragic and surprisingly moving amidst the film's tongue-in-cheek tone, and a curious counterpoint to Depression-era cinema's usual propensity for portraying the super-rich as vacuous twits. Ernest Thesiger and Eva Moore deliver masterclasses of brooding as the manor's sister tenants, while title star Boris Karloff is genuinely terrifying, his performance so much more affecting than the mere rage-ravaged riff on his Frankenstein lumbering and grunting you'd initially expect. Finally, Brember Wills gives a performance so deft and daringly over-the-top that he turns horror conventions on their head even while pushing new boundaries of skin-crawling, especially for the 1930s. Whale's quieter companion piece to his more famous forays into the macabre may tip the cap more at Hitchcock than Mary Shelley, but ably continues his macro theme of humans being far more terrifying than any conventional 'monsters.' The Old Dark House may be humbler in scope, and somewhat more tonally imbalanced than some of its cohort of horror classics (including a swooning romantic subplot that's altogether too saccharine and sincere to play amidst its sardonic surroundings). Still, at a mere 72 minutes, the film is as concise and sardonically sinister as it is creepy, and still a slice of spine-tingling fun for an eerie, rainy night. -8/10

The delivery of some of the characters is somewhat stilted possibly owing to the sound recording equipment requiring slow and distinct dialogue or that some of the actors were still transitioning to sound film acting. Nevertheless, once you are drawn into it, the film is entertaining on a number of levels. It is a weird combination of horror parody, social commentary and character study. The scene in which the old crone played you Eva Moore taunts the lovely Gloria Stuart about the fleeting nature of youth and youthful beauty is remarkable. "Fine stuff but it will rot!" I bet some of us are reminded of these words when we watch Stuart in her final film role as the old lady in "Titanic". I love how Ernest Thesiger invests the most benign phrases with a sense of foreboding and menace. He makes "Have a potato" and even "Good morning" sound serenely sinister. Lillian Bond is a joy. As a counterpoint to Stuart's classical beauty and nervousness, Bond's cheerful, cheeky, earthy and sensible working class girl shines.

Two groups of travellers driving through a storm in remote countryside are forced to seek shelter in an old house, where they find some strange hospitality - until a dark secret is revealed.Feel good chiller with plenty of charm and idiosyncrasy. The location is a rambling mansion with plenty of dark nooks and crannies, and a flight of primitive steps at the front door that the actors had some difficulty negotiating. As usual, characters split up and wander off in defiance of common sense, and their piercing screams fail to reach the ears of their fellow travellers, in defiance of the laws of physics.The performances are uneven, but the stand outs are the three ladies who present very different characters – oh, and there's a fourth lady, unaccountably in drag. The director was having fun. Of the men, one character is poorly written, so there's not much the actor could do – but otherwise the performances are entertaining, although the cackling laughter can't make up for the underwhelming nature of the reveal. A daft story, not to be taken seriously, and the plot jumps about as we move from one part of the house to the other, ending in a sappy climax.Overall, not really a horror – more an entertaining oddity.