Table Of Content
As the group chats by the fireplace, Gladys reveals her real last name is Perkins. Roger and Gladys go to retrieve some whiskey from his car. The electric lights go out and Rebecca tells Horace to get a lamp from an upstairs landing.
User reviews183
Whale and his cast create some wonderfully crafted characterisations. Ernest Thesiger has a weirdly birdy presence and Eva Moore plays the gimlet-eyed old shrew issuing doom-laden warnings with great effect. Boris Karloff adds sinister presence by stumbling about in bearded, scarred face and saying nothing at all. The visitors are an uninteresting bunch in comparison, excepting for Charles Laughton who offers a marvellously crass and boisterous presence that succeeds in stealing the film.
Development and production
For many years, the original version was considered a lost film and gained a tremendous reputation as one of the pre-eminent gothic horror films. Director Curtis Harrington, a friend of Whale, helped to rediscover The Old Dark House, having repeatedly asked Universal Studios to locate the film negative. Harrington eventually discovered a print of the film in the vaults of Universal in 1968.[7] He persuaded the George Eastman House film archive to finance a new duplicate negative of the poorly kept first reel,[11] and restore the rest of the film. In the late 1920 and throughout the 1930s, there flourished a sub-genre of horror films that one has dubbed the Old Dark House thriller.
Art Director
It's believed that all current prints were derived from a surviving 16mm print. There is one nifty jolt shot where Gloria Stuart stands in front of the dinnertable making animal figures in silhouette on the wall and then another figure suddenly appears seemingly from within her shadow. Whale creates great suspense out of the scenes with Boris Karloff pursuing Gloria Stuart and Raymond Massey trying to fight him off. It all culminates in a wonderful climax where Raymond Massey must face down the diminutive and dementedly nutty Bember Wills over the dinnertable and wrestles with him on the stair landing as he sets the house alight. A deft blend of well-chosen ingredients, The Old Dark House is a delightfully scary horror comedy that benefits from James Whale's suspenseful direction. Saul's attempt at burning the house has caused little damage.
He frees Margaret and Gladys from the closet before taking Saul's body upstairs. Many of the films in the Old Dark House genre had wonderfully stylised lighting scheme and directorial flourishes – fine examples being the 1927 The Cat and the Canary and The Bat Whispers – but ultimately they were films of occasional affect. On the other hand, in The Old Dark House James Whale creates a Gothic mood that permeates the entire film. The film is set contemporary and the tone is certainly a good deal more realist than the distorted European netherworld that Frankenstein took place in, nevertheless James Whale causes the film to slip into a stylised Gothic mood despite.
A review by John Chard
(Like Frankenstein, James Whale’s touch is so Gothic that one has to actively remind themselves that the film is set contemporary). Whale borrows the lighting effects from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) and German Expressionist cinema, filling the film with starkly bared sets and ominous lighting schemes. Universal had purchased Benighted (1927), a novel by the renowned British writer and broadcaster J.B.
After Gladys treats Penderal, dawn finally breaks and the storm is over. The five guests leave the house behind as quickly as possible and Horace cheerfully bids them goodbye, as if the events of the night had never happened. The five guests leave the house behind as quickly as possible and Horace cheerfully bids them goodbye, as if the events of the night had never ... Husband and wife Philip and Margaret Waverton are driving to Shrewsbury along with their friend Penderel. They become lost somewhere in rural Wales in the midst of a rainstorm. They seek refuge at a nearby house where they are welcomed by the eccentric Horace Femm, who lives with his deaf and suspicious sister Rebecca and the mute, sinisterly hulking butler Morgan.
Releases by Date
Things get worse as the brutish manservant Morgan gets drunk, runs amuck and releases the long pent-up brother Saul, a psychotic pyromaniac who gleefully tries to destroy the residence by setting it on fire. Philip Waverton, his wife Margaret and their friend Roger Penderel are lost while driving at night in a heavy storm. They come upon an old house in the Welsh countryside where they receive shelter from Horace Femm and his sister Rebecca. He also warns them that their mute butler Morgan is a dangerous, heavy drinker. As Rebecca escorts Margaret to a bedroom to change clothes, she tells her about the Femm family, which Rebecca says was sinful and godless. Rebecca reveals that her 102-year-old father, Sir Roderick Femm, still lives in the house.
See the 'Titanic' Cast Then and Now! - First For Women
See the 'Titanic' Cast Then and Now!.
Posted: Tue, 05 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
On a stormy night in Wales, five people, Philip and Margaret Waverton, their friend Penderel, Sir William Porterhouse and his lady friend, chorus girl Gladys Perkins, whose stage name is DuCane, seek refuge in a gloomy house off the road. The denizens of the house include Horace Femm, an hysteric, his sister Rebecca, a religious fanatic, and Morgan, their scarred, brutish butler, who is a mute. At dinner, Horace confides that sometime in the past, their sister Rachel died in a mysterious fashion.
Stranded travelers seek refuge from a raging storm in a forbidding Welsh mansion. However, they soon realize that the mansion's inhabitants are hiding a dark secret in this classic Universal horror mystery. During dinner, the group are joined by Sir William Porterhouse and a chorus girl with the stage name Gladys DuCane, who also seek refuge from the storm.
All the film’s effect comes in James Whale’s mood and the droll playing of the cast. A characteristic facet of James Whale’s directorial work was his droll and often eccentric sense of humour. This was not allowed much room to come to the fore in Frankenstein but started to appear here and reached its full blossoming in The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein. Most of these Old Dark House films trod a comfortable line between comedy and thrills but James Whale makes The Old Dark House distinctly and uniquely his own. The dinnertable scene with Ernest Thesiger insisting “Have a potato” is a classic, while his refusal to go up the stairs to get the lamp is hysterical. Roger and Gladys begin flirting while they drink and smoke.
Gladys says her relationship with William is platonic, and suggests she should live with Roger instead. They go back to the house, where they wake up William and tell him about their new romance. Meanwhile, Philip and Margaret go into the room where he heard the voice; they find Roderick Femm there. He warns them about his eldest son, Saul, a crazed pyromaniac kept in the locked room. Philip and Margaret discover that Morgan has let Saul out; they go downstairs to warn the other guests. Philip and William drag Morgan into the kitchen while Rebecca flees to her bedroom.
Saul steals a burning branch from the fireplace and sets fire to a curtain before Roger awakes. They fight and fall off a landing; Saul is killed and Roger injured. Morgan breaks out of the kitchen and returns to the main room.
The actor playing the aging family head – listed as John Dudgeon – was actually a woman Elspeth Dudgeon. MovieMeter aims to be the largest, most complete movie archive with reviews and rankings, in the World. Our team of journalists delivers the latest news for movies and TV shows. Here you will find an overview of the cast of the movie The Old Dark House from the year 1932, including all the actors, actresses and the director. When you click on the name of an actor, actress or director from the movie The Old Dark House-cast you can watch more movies and/or series by him or her. There was a period in which this was believed to be a lost film.
No comments:
Post a Comment