hillbillyhatfield "Have a Potato". The grandfather of the haunted, scary, creep house movies, and comedy horror. The iconic movie with the blandest name of all. The Old Dark House. No chance of not knowing what it's about.There is a reason why this movie is still great after almost 90 years. It is that good.

JohnHowardReid 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.

Prichards12345 The Old Dark House is the second of James Whale's four horror masterpieces and is probably less well known than his two Frankenstein epics and Invisible Man; but it is also one of his most personal and in-jokey films, remaining a delightful concoction of humour and ghoulish eccentricity.The plot is pretty simple, three travellers (Gloria Stuart, Raymond Massey and Melvyn Douglas) are stranded during a terrible storm at a remote house in the Welsh mountains whose inhabitants are both odd and grotesque. The demesne is occupied by the Family Femm, and we are quickly introduced to Horace (Ernest Thesiger), Rebecca (Eva Moore)and a mute,brutish butler named Morgan (Boris Karloff). But they are not the only members of the house, and therein lies the mystery....Later our stranded travellers are joined by two other storm-shelterers, Sir William Porterhouse (the irrepressible Charles Laughton), and Gladys Ducane (Lillian Bond). And what a magnificent bunch of actors they all make. Whale is such a skilled craftsman he can round out his characters in just a minute or two of screen time.A simple story then, but the magic is in the telling. Whale gives us a marvellous scene between Eva Moore and Gloria Stuart as the latter is changing her dress, cross cutting into close-up through a distorted mirror on Moore's vicious old crone - "That's fine stuff but it'll rot", she says, pointing to Stuart's chic evening dress. Then she touches her prey on the chest "That's finer stuff, but it'll rot too in time." There is more to this scene but I won't spoil it.Look out for the hilarious dinner scene with Laughton exclaiming mightily over the pleasures of roast beef. And over the supper lurks Boris Karloff's drunken, lustful butler dishing up water, pickled onions and black-eyed potatoes while sneaking glances at Gloria Stuart.Karloff's a delight, going on the rampage after a bender, and letting out the black sheep of the family. Lets just say an actor by the name of Brember Wills almost steals the whole movie even though he makes his entrance very late as the impish pyromaniac His 10 minutes or so of screen time are truly unforgettable.All the cast are terrific, though the romantic interest scenes are possibly the only weak point in the film. Even Whale can't build up a convincing romance between two characters in such a short space of time, but who's quibbling? The Old Dark House is masterpiece of black comedy. For me it's the last word on Old Dark House movies - you know the kind! Long neglected by Universal - until the late sixties prints were not in circulation; the studio actually believed the negative had been lost. Thankfully a print turned up and we can still saviour this eccentric glory of a film.

DansHauntedHouseful When describing films that are overly saturated with elements of a certain theme, the phase "X for X's sake" is often used. 'Gore for gore's sake' or 'Violence for violence's sake', you get the idea. I am tempted to use the phase "Creepy for Creepy's sake" when describing the film, although I don't mean it in a negative way. The Old Dark House doesn't grab you by the head and smash your face down inside a pie of creepiness. Rather the creepiness is all around you from beginning to end, though it may not always be subtle.It is a simple story – a violent storm forces two sets of travelers to seek shelter at and old, dark house. The inhabitants of the house are quite strange, as would be expected. There are several subplots that arise, and some of these are awkward. But never mind, the purpose of the film is not to tell a thought-provoking story with a compelling plot. Instead, it is to revel in the art of the uncanny. It succeeds in its goal with dark and chilling atmospheres, crafty camera-work, and its effective use of shadows. Some of the characters are humorously unsettling, even by today's standards. I would like to go more in depth and describing some of them, but that would require me to tread too far into the forest of spoilers and I don't want to do that. Oh and there's the screeching of the wind! Gotta love that! Read more of my review at my blog, which is found in my profile