The Old Dark House (1932)
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The Old Dark House Movie Review
The Old Dark House is a 1932 horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart and Charles Laughton. It’s a disappointing flick.
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“Even Welsh ought not to sound like that!“
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A bunch of strangers and travelers stay for one night in the titular old house to escape from the storm. There, everyone starts chatting and the family mystery is soon resolved. In concept, the film is excellent. However, in execution, it’s rather weak and subpar.
The problem with this film is that its story just never takes off and never becomes particularly interesting. The conclusion and twist did not work particularly well for me and the film lacks strong horror scenes and is basically a drama with horror elements. The atmosphere is definitely solid, but I wanted more actual scares and thrills.
Boris Karloff as Morgan is excellent and quite memorable. Melvyn Douglas is also solid and Charles Laughton is reliably great in his American debut. Gloria Stuart is fine and Ernest Thesiger is delightfully campy in his role. Eva Moore plays the religious fanatic superbly and I wished to have seen more from her as she’s one of the highlights. But why Sir Roderick Femm is played by a woman is beyond me. The director’s explanation that he did not find any older man for the role is ridiculous.
The Old Dark House is so well shot and I liked the house and the mysterious tone to it quite a bit. The beginning is particularly effective as a great atmospheric hook. But the ending disappointed me as it did not deliver on the film’s horror promise at all.
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The acting is strong across the board and the dialogue is also pretty good, but the film almost has too much talking in it as it thus forgets to have a story and a horror scenario. I liked some conversations quite a bit, but they overtook too much of an already short runtime. James Whale is a great director behind ‘Frankenstein’, but here he didn’t do a good job in the director’s chair and it’s a rare miss for him.
The Old Dark House is a rare misfire for great horror director James Whale which definitely has an interesting setting and concept, is well shot and very well acted across the board, but the ending is not great and the film just never made use of its setting and characters to bring an effective horror story. It also has way too much dialogue in it.
