The Old Dark House (PG.)
Directed by James Whale. 1933.
Starring Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Lilian Bond and Gloria Stuart. Out on Blu-ray and DVD as part of Eureka's Masters Of Cinema series. Black and white. 69 mins.
It was a dark and stormy night. In Wales. With the road washed away, a group of weary travellers try to find shelter in a … well, take a guess. Inside are a ghoulish collection of weirdoes, the Femm family, who are less than welcoming. You could probably have guessed that as well.
I tend to judge the artists from the golden age of Hollywood by the extent they are parodied in Mel Brooks's films. Hedy Lamarr may have been a great beauty of 30's cinema, performer of a historic nude scene and genius inventor of Frequency Hopping, but for me, she'll always be Harvey Korman's recurring name correcting gag, "It's Hedley.... Hedley LeMarr," in Blazing Saddles. Brooks would devote a whole film to Hitchcock (High Anxiety) but I don't think anyone inspired him quite so much as Englishman James Whale and the four horror films (Frankenstein, this, Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man) that he made in the early 30s for Universal. Almost all of Wilder and Brook's Young Frankenstein is taken from these works. (Possibly more the Frankensteins than the other two but the slavishness of the imitation, and the joy the film takes in copying them, makes clear the degree of devotion in them.)
This was long thought to be lost which considering the quality of the cast and the off-screen talent involved, and its position in the classic Universal Monster movie series, would've been a travesty. Luckily it was found in the early 80s. The problem with finding that which has been thought lost, is that which has been thought lost living up to expectations. I first became aware of the film in a preview write up in the Xmas double edition of the NME for the films on telly over the festive season. (This was in the 80s when both the Xmas double edition of the NME and the films on telly over the festive season were very weighty matters.) The writer said he'd been waiting 20 years and hoped it wouldn't be a disappointment. I wonder now what he thought of it. Was it all he had hoped it would be? Or was he just a little bit disappointed? Even if he didn't want to fully admit it to himself. Once found, it is essential to find something of merit in the lost film and I think people have been trying to do that for the last thirty years.
It's a very odd film. Of course, it is not the least bit scary now (how terribly emasculating to have a PG slapped on your frightener.) But then none of them from that era are. The enormous set looks good, the cast is fun, but nothing much happens. The approach is more comedic and there are some cherishable moments of humour. When Karloff opens the door as the demented butler and grunts at them Douglas remarks, “Even Welsh ought not to sound like that.”
Adapted from a book by J.B. Priestley the film hints at bigger themes but doesn't elucidate them. The script, or Whale's handling of it, is scattershot and random. For example, we are never told what the connection is between the married couple, Massey and Stuart, and the cynical wisecracker Douglas in the back seat of their car. Or even why they have to make it to Shrewsbury on this foul night. A romance between Douglas and Bond, another washed out and weary traveller who turns up at the house a little later on alongside Laughton's self-made rich industrialist, springs up from nowhere. Various dark terrors are threatened but little arrives and when it does you can't tell if they are meant to be taken seriously or not.
You can see though how this was the blueprint for subsequent old dark house mystery. Some have seen this as being a send up of genre that it was just inventing. What struck me was how Karloff's grunting butler Morgan and Thesiger's waspish, shrivelled Horace Femm were the inspirations for Oddbod and Kenneth Williams' Dr Orlando Watt in Carry On Screaming. Sadly there is no Fenella Fielding, though Gloria Stuart (the old lady from Titanic) is very fetching as she runs around in her silk slip.
Extras.
Though I can't say I really got a lot out of watching the film I did thoroughly enjoy exploring it in the various extras.
There are three commentaries: one by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones; one by Gloria Stuart and one by Whale biographer James Curtis.
There's an interview with Karloff's daughter and on a piece on how Curtis Harrington saved the movie.
Best of all is video essay by David Cairns. It seems like barely a disc is released these days without a contribution from Cairns but they are always top notch. He did an excellent examination of the young Cary Grant on Criterion's The Awful Truth disc and here he does wonders on this film, especially explaining the degrees to which the film is faithful from Priestley's novel, and how it differs. Top notch, well researched, informative stuff.
I couldn't help but sense during Cairn's dissection, and the Newman and Jones commentary that they didn't know quite what to make of it either. Oh, they were enthusiastic about it but they keep finding things that didn't make sense or were illogical.
Directed by James Whale. 1933.
Starring Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Lilian Bond and Gloria Stuart. Out on Blu-ray and DVD as part of Eureka's Masters Of Cinema series. Black and white. 69 mins.
It was a dark and stormy night. In Wales. With the road washed away, a group of weary travellers try to find shelter in a … well, take a guess. Inside are a ghoulish collection of weirdoes, the Femm family, who are less than welcoming. You could probably have guessed that as well.
I tend to judge the artists from the golden age of Hollywood by the extent they are parodied in Mel Brooks's films. Hedy Lamarr may have been a great beauty of 30's cinema, performer of a historic nude scene and genius inventor of Frequency Hopping, but for me, she'll always be Harvey Korman's recurring name correcting gag, "It's Hedley.... Hedley LeMarr," in Blazing Saddles. Brooks would devote a whole film to Hitchcock (High Anxiety) but I don't think anyone inspired him quite so much as Englishman James Whale and the four horror films (Frankenstein, this, Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man) that he made in the early 30s for Universal. Almost all of Wilder and Brook's Young Frankenstein is taken from these works. (Possibly more the Frankensteins than the other two but the slavishness of the imitation, and the joy the film takes in copying them, makes clear the degree of devotion in them.)
This was long thought to be lost which considering the quality of the cast and the off-screen talent involved, and its position in the classic Universal Monster movie series, would've been a travesty. Luckily it was found in the early 80s. The problem with finding that which has been thought lost, is that which has been thought lost living up to expectations. I first became aware of the film in a preview write up in the Xmas double edition of the NME for the films on telly over the festive season. (This was in the 80s when both the Xmas double edition of the NME and the films on telly over the festive season were very weighty matters.) The writer said he'd been waiting 20 years and hoped it wouldn't be a disappointment. I wonder now what he thought of it. Was it all he had hoped it would be? Or was he just a little bit disappointed? Even if he didn't want to fully admit it to himself. Once found, it is essential to find something of merit in the lost film and I think people have been trying to do that for the last thirty years.
It's a very odd film. Of course, it is not the least bit scary now (how terribly emasculating to have a PG slapped on your frightener.) But then none of them from that era are. The enormous set looks good, the cast is fun, but nothing much happens. The approach is more comedic and there are some cherishable moments of humour. When Karloff opens the door as the demented butler and grunts at them Douglas remarks, “Even Welsh ought not to sound like that.”
Adapted from a book by J.B. Priestley the film hints at bigger themes but doesn't elucidate them. The script, or Whale's handling of it, is scattershot and random. For example, we are never told what the connection is between the married couple, Massey and Stuart, and the cynical wisecracker Douglas in the back seat of their car. Or even why they have to make it to Shrewsbury on this foul night. A romance between Douglas and Bond, another washed out and weary traveller who turns up at the house a little later on alongside Laughton's self-made rich industrialist, springs up from nowhere. Various dark terrors are threatened but little arrives and when it does you can't tell if they are meant to be taken seriously or not.
You can see though how this was the blueprint for subsequent old dark house mystery. Some have seen this as being a send up of genre that it was just inventing. What struck me was how Karloff's grunting butler Morgan and Thesiger's waspish, shrivelled Horace Femm were the inspirations for Oddbod and Kenneth Williams' Dr Orlando Watt in Carry On Screaming. Sadly there is no Fenella Fielding, though Gloria Stuart (the old lady from Titanic) is very fetching as she runs around in her silk slip.
Extras.
Though I can't say I really got a lot out of watching the film I did thoroughly enjoy exploring it in the various extras.
There are three commentaries: one by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones; one by Gloria Stuart and one by Whale biographer James Curtis.
There's an interview with Karloff's daughter and on a piece on how Curtis Harrington saved the movie.
Best of all is video essay by David Cairns. It seems like barely a disc is released these days without a contribution from Cairns but they are always top notch. He did an excellent examination of the young Cary Grant on Criterion's The Awful Truth disc and here he does wonders on this film, especially explaining the degrees to which the film is faithful from Priestley's novel, and how it differs. Top notch, well researched, informative stuff.
I couldn't help but sense during Cairn's dissection, and the Newman and Jones commentary that they didn't know quite what to make of it either. Oh, they were enthusiastic about it but they keep finding things that didn't make sense or were illogical.
