Following the runaway cinematic success of James Whale’s 1931 film Frankenstein, Universal were keen to lure its director back into horror territory, alongside the film’s breakout star Boris Karloff (actually already a seasoned veteran with around 80 credits to his name). Although Whale was reluctant to be pigeonholed, and indeed continued to work in a diverse range of genres throughout his Hollywood career, he suggested that the studio acquired the rights to J.B. Priestley’s gothic 1927 novel Benighted. Retitled The Old Dark House, the resulting film was released 90 years ago in October 1932, and its gleefully strange brew remains fresh, fascinating, and surprising today.
Priestley’s book tells the story of a group of travellers stranded by bad weather in the Welsh countryside, forced to seek refuge in a lonely mansion inhabited by the strange, dissolute Femm family. Characteristically, the tale combines its thriller plot with biting social criticism and a slight hint of the supernatural, a cocktail perfected by Priestley in his play An Inspector Calls (1945), probably the author’s best-known work today. The film’s screenplay, written by fellow playwright and future UK Labour MP Benn W. Levy with uncredited input from R.C. Sherriff, is a fairly faithful adaptation in terms of plot. The most noticeable difference between book and film is in terms of tone; while Benighted’s serious critique of post-World War I Britain is not entirely removed, it is significantly leavened with the kind of macabre, impish humour that defines later Whale classics such as The Invisible Man (1933) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
With its sinister characters and setting, The Old Dark House echoes elements of popular (and, by 1932, already much-filmed) Broadway plays such as The Cat & The Canary and Seven Keys to Baldpate. However, it does not share their fondness for elaborate and ultimately reassuring hoaxes, with no hackneyed plot twists regarding secret fortunes or disguised heirs. If the Femms are never entirely trustworthy or reliable, their derangement itself remains utterly sincere. Their visitors do not unmask them as frauds or solve the dysfunctional family’s problems, and they leave without righting any wrongs or finding a new financial prosperity.
Alongside its unusual commitment to its crazed inhabitants, the film also cements many of the visual and stylistic tropes that have come to define the haunted house sub-genre. As rain lashes down and thunder cracks, Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) seek shelter, along with their travelling companion Penderel (Melvyn Douglas). Flashes of lightning illuminate the Femm’s mansion, rising up like an ancient tomb amidst the landslides and floods. As they knock on the door, Penderel jokes that their summons will wake the dead, unaware of just how apt his wisecrack will prove to be. The door creaks open to reveal the daunting figure of the enormous, mute butler Morgan (Karloff), his scarred face lit from below to bathe it in menacing shadows. He ushers them in with a mixture of hostile aggression and brutish solicitude, and the unfortunate travellers leave the rational world outside for an unforgettable night of distinctly lacklustre hospitality, locked doors, mayhem, and madness. Variations on the film’s iconic introductory sequence have appeared in countless works since, ranging from the serious likes of Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1951) and The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963), to the gleeful parodies of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975) and Clue (Jonathan Lynn, 1985).
Much of the following story is located in the house’s cavernous ground floor reception and dining room. An imposing wooden staircase, complete with gargoyles on the newel posts, hangs ominously over the gargantuan space, casting long, sharp shadows across the austere stone walls. The crumbling coat-of-arms above the gaping, cheerless fireplace seems stranded, as do the ornate chairs and dining table marooned in the centre of the coldly desolate room. The furnishings are entirely lacking in comfort, each individual item seeming lost in its own neglected rigor mortis with no overall sense of harmony, a perfect reflection of the mansion’s inhabitants. A half-finished vase of flowers is unceremoniously cast onto the fire to make way for the unexpected guests to sit down, as though only a small amount of external life can be accommodated at once, with every chance of its abrupt removal.
The remaining parts of the house are like phantasmal severed limbs, tenuously linked to the central room but with minds and atmospheres of their own, their doors slamming shut to entrap the unwary and separate the visitors from one another. The downstairs hallway leading to the kitchen is a surreal gauntlet of billowing curtains, constantly buffeted by the storm as though the mansion’s interior connections were under attack. The claustrophobic bedroom of Rebecca Femm (Eva Moore) is submerged in broken reflections, the mirrors embodying their owner’s distorted, embittered perspective. The lower floors, hewn from rough, ancient stone, are solid if unwelcoming, but as the house rises, the foundations become more and more unsteady. Fittingly, the upper floors are home to the most forsaken branches of the family. Ancient, androgynous patriarch Sir Roderick (mischievously credited to ‘John’ Dudgeon but actually played by the actress Elspeth Dudgeon) flits in and out of coherence in one bedroom. The other room, ominously locked, belongs to their imprisoned and possibly homicidal brother Saul (Brember Wills), whose slight form and apparently mild demeanour conceals a cat-like agility coupled with a Biblical love of fiery destruction.
As the decay and disorder of the family home suggests, sanity is very much a relative concept with the inhabitants, with even the saner Femms being unhinged at best. Elderly sister Rebecca will not allow electric light in the house, symbolising both a rejection of modernity and a desire to keep the family’s affairs cloaked in darkness. Her venomous hatred of “laughter and sin,” particularly where fashionable young women such as Margaret are concerned, seems to hint at a deeply repressed attraction, warped and frustrated into sadism by her religious fervour and self-loathing. The haughty, cadaverous Horace, played beautifully by the scene-stealing Ernest Thesiger, is both hilarious and utterly duplicitous. His sly, pompous menace is peppered with flashes of the subversive sexuality that would flower in his later role as Doctor Pretorius in Whale’s masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein. Horace presides over the guests with comical disdain, barely concealing his contempt as they all sit down to a spectacularly unappetising meal. Once events begin to spiral out of control, he scuttles away to hide, shamelessly leaving others to do the family’s dirty work, returning only once the danger has passed to blithely bid the thankless visitors adieu like a demented royal.
The family looks down on their hulking servant Morgan, with Horace describing him, not inaccurately, as “an uncivilised brute.” But even though they can barely control his drunken fury or prevent his unnervingly lustful advances toward the unfortunate Margaret, the Femms cannot cope without his dubious assistance. We see no evidence of the upper-class family being willing to cook, clean, help, or care for one another — even in a crisis — and nor do we ever see them express any gratitude to their long-suffering servant. Perversely, Morgan is the only member of the household to express any tender feelings toward any of the other inhabitants, mutely carrying Saul away in his arms with surprising love and care. Perhaps bonded to the imprisoned brother by their shared lowly status, the silent Morgan is clearly heartbroken by the outcome of the evening’s events, in stark contrast to the distinctly cheerful Horace.
In line with the social criticism of Priestley’s novel, the deranged, aristocratic Femms can be interpreted as representing the old corrupt, class-bound order, with the travellers standing for a post-WWI Britain struggling to escape from their malign shadow. The Wavertons are the middle class, bickering like a screwball-comedy couple but essentially committed to maintaining their respectability; they seem unlikely to discuss their grim experiences afterwards, despite Margaret’s traumas at the hands of Morgan and Rebecca. Their companion Penderel masks the terrors and disillusionment of his war service behind a suave façade, slowly regaining a measure of purpose and self-respect as the night progresses. Tellingly, the story contrives to leave him to face Saul alone, a symbolic battle between the repressed, violent past (represented by the insane prisoner) and the dream of a better future (the damaged but not entirely lost Penderel).
Two further unexpected guests complete the film’s panoramic view of British society. Despite his title, the bluff Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) is an example of a new kind of social mobility, rising from his working class origins to strike back against the snobbery he blames for the death of his beloved wife. Yet while his skill at making money has brought him a title, it has not brought him fulfilment or acceptance, with both the Femms and the Wavertons showing signs of discomfort with his elevated status. His companion, the chorus girl Gladys (Lillian Bond), takes a more relaxed view of her position. She initially introduces herself by her stage name DuCane, but ends up laughing at her own pretensions, admitting her real surname to be the less exotic Perkins. Breaking with expected social standards, she eagerly embraces a future of “not pretending to be better than I am.” It is fitting that she is united with Penderel at the film’s conclusion, the pair being the only characters who really seem ready to learn from their experiences. As Penderel recovers in her arms, Gladys cries out “He’s alive! He’s alive!” — a clear echo of the director’s Frankenstein; this time however, the unexpected resurrection seems to promise hope rather than destruction.
Despite its influential status, The Old Dark House did not initially match the success of other Universal horror classics like Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula or Karl Freund’s 1932 The Mummy. The disinterested studio failed to renew the rights to the novel in 1957, leading to a remake in 1963 by William Castle, and the film’s negative was actually considered lost for many years. Fortunately, in 1968 a print was discovered in the Universal archives by the filmmaker Curtis Harrington, who led efforts to restore it, allowing the film to reclaim its rightful place in the horror pantheon. Although it inevitably shows its age at times, it has weathered 90 years remarkably well, with its strong performances and atmospheric sets anchored beautifully by Whale’s characteristically stylish direction and infectiously puckish wit.
