The Old Dark House

1932 ****

I pounced on The Old Dark House after JPX posted this excellent in memorium clip of Gloria Stuart. I saw here the same weird magic that vibrates in James Whale's Frankenstein movies, a magic that is rooted in the way film of this era is much closer in form to its big brother: stage theater. The titular old dark house (and is there a better title, really, anywhere?) is brought to us by a handful of large, versitile sets, allowing long scenes to take place in the same room. Also stage-like is the level of narrative entrusted to the actors, who get to apply their characters to the film in thick layers, like paint on wide wet brushes.

Here, for instance, you know immediately that the man on the left is scared of something. And he should be, because look at him, he's a floating skull-man in a sea of darkness that happens to be his goddamn house.

Complimenting the broad acting strokes is the wonderfully gloomy aspect of the house. The set is grand but sparse, the walls are stark, unreassuring slabs you only see in the lightning flashes, mostly they remain planes of shadow.

Into this giant gloomy box of fun stumble our heroes, Gloria Stuart, her husband, and their friend with the mustache.

"No I'll never shave it. Saved my life in the war, you know."
This guy cracked me up. The first few minutes of the film are the other two freaking out because they're driving a car with a canvas top through a storm in the mountains, and then the camera pans to the back seat and it turns out the whole time they've been bitching he's just sitting in the back with his feet up, smoking. He's the devil-may-care guy, and here's why I like him: I often get upset about the decisions people make when they're trapped in a house with danger, and this guy's take is basically "I'm gonna drink whiskey and see if I can't steal some other guy's girlfriend."

"Ah, Life!"
Gladys here stumbled in later with her sugar daddy, a blustering Scottish businessman played by Charles Naughton. Mustache proceeds to take him apart by politely engaging in a casual conversation about how the Scotsman is a hollow, sad, soulless moneygrubber. And then he lures his pet showgirl out to the garage where there's a secret bottle stashed. Dude is cold, yo.

One of my other favorite characters is Horace Femm, played to the craven hilt by Ernest Thesiger, who later played a large role in James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. Every line of his is a curling stroke of inky creepiness.

Karloff is a blast in this as well, playing the caveman butler who's okay unless he finds some whiskey, which he does. They never mention if the bottle belongs to the newcomers but I like to think so. What happens next is that he does the opposite of what they have a big dude around for in the first place, which is to stop guarding the mysterious secret locked upstairs (because you know there is one) and let it out instead.

There follows one of the perfectly expressive horror moments ever, when our heroes look up to see Bad Morgan on the stairs and then above him, quietly, appears the hand of... somebody else. It's a true milestone of the genre, right up there with The Call's Coming From Inside The House, and my only regret is that I forgot to grab a screenshot. Still, in the light of the Brothers X-Pants's recent tour de force with the action figures, I had to whip something up.


The other great part of Karloff's performance is watching three men trying to subdue a reelingly drunk and pissed-off Boris Karloff. Guy was freaking big.

But for me the standout star of this movie is Gloria Stuart. I don't really know why she decides to put on a white silky evening gown in the middle of a crisis, but I love her for it.

She elevates the imagery from gloomy and expressive to positively gothic, offsetting the surrounding greys and blacks like a luminous, vulnerable nymph.

The best best BEST part of the movie I have pictorially summerized below, as Gloria, alone, is suddenly gripped by a nameless terror and runs directionless around the house. There's a scene in Gothic where Natasha Richardson is running around Byron's mansion in the wind and lightning, terrified and wearing nothing but a white nightdress. I always remembered it for its iconic elements: lightning, thunder, wind, screams, damsel in distress -- it's an idea way older than film. It was great fun to find an antecedant of the Gothic example, because it hits all the same buttons.

I'm going to make fun of her now, but seriously, groove on these images.

"No, wait, I..."

"Should I go over here? Or..."

"Fuck it I'm running over HERE!"

"No! I'm going up these goddamn stairs!"

"Wait! No!"

"Oh god I'm exhausted! I'm collapsing on this thing..."

"Wait! No!"

"I'm getting the fuck out of here!!!"

"Shit! I'm in the Land of the Lost house!"

The Old Dark House is old, so there's a hundred ways it may seem dated or silly. But it's a triumph for lovers of haunted houses and scary stories. I had a great time with it.