The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932)

James Whale's second foray into the macabre after the previous year's Frankenstein is another major success and one of my favorite '30s horror films. I think I liked it even more on this second viewing than I did the first time around. Whale is both an accomplished visual stylist and a great observer of people and their mannerisms and quirks, and he has a sense of humor that is both wicked and empathetic. This combination gives his best films tremendous staying power, high rewatchability, and a modern sensibility that doesn't date.

The Old Dark House, written by Benn W. Levy based on the novel by J.B. Priestley, takes a familiar setup (travelers forced to take refuge in a storm at the home of sinister people with mysterious motives) and transforms it into something unique. None of the characters are tropes; all have their own particular points of view and ways of being that aren't movie types. It's so refreshing and entertaining to see these fleshed-out characters (played by great actors) interacting with each other in front of Whale's interested camera on the beautifully designed sets of Russell A. Gausman (with much input there from Whale).

The film begins with bickering married couple Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) and their pipe-smoking, wise-cracking buddy Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) driving through terrible conditions late at night, lost in a storm. The Wavertons are tense, taking their frustration out on each other (it's refreshing to see couples arguing like actual couples in a Hollywood movie without it being some premonition of murder, infidelity, divorce, or happily-ever-after reconciliation; they're just stressed out and having a normal fight), but Penderel is having his usual detached good time, smoking away and changing popular song lyrics to storm-related tunes like some kind of big-band "Weird Al."

After nearly getting wiped out by a mudslide, the trio decides to stop at an old, dark house until the storm blows over. The door is answered by a menacing, hulking figure with a scarred face who grunts and mutters gibberish. This man is a servant named Morgan (Boris Karloff), and, in addition to his servant duties and his mutterings and groans, his favorite activities include glowering angrily and drinking to excess. He's an unfriendly presence, but Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger) welcomes them inside. He's a nervous man, terrified of the storm, but, despite being an atheist, he does the Christian thing and takes in the weary, lost travelers even though his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore), despite being devoutly religious, makes it clear these people are not wanted.

Horace, despite his nervousness, is a welcoming host, pouring a round of gin (much to Penderel's delight) and insisting the strangers join them for a dinner of potatoes, roast beef, and pickled onions (Rebecca is a pickled onion fiend). The siblings constantly argue about religion, whether or not they should have allowed the strangers to enter, and the checkered history of the Femms, several of whom have met untimely ends or become insane. Mid-dinner, more knocks sound on the door. Two more stranded strangers join the party, a wealthy businessman and widow named Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his paid escort, a chorus girl named Gladys (Lillian Bond). Gladys and Penderel are immediately drawn to each other, and the whole gang drink gin, eat, and tell their sometimes emotionally heated life stories, to Horace's amusement and Rebecca's irritation and contempt.

Things get creepier when Morgan gets drunk and violent and our stranded characters learn about two more Femms in the house, the 102-year-old patriarch Sir Roderic (played by a woman, Elspeth Dudgeon) and homicidally insane brother Saul (Brember Wills). Saul is locked away on the top floor, and the siblings are both terrified of him, but servant Morgan has a deep feeling of warmth for the man, the only person in the house he appears to like.

The film remains creepy, exciting, funny, and compelling for each of its 72 minutes. Though The Old Dark House doesn't get as much attention as Whale's two Frankenstein films, it is just as good. Everything works: the acting, the shot compositions, the writing, the pacing, the big storm scene at the beginning, the introduction of each character, the descent into action at the end. This is one of Whale's greatest films.

It's fascinating to look at this film through the lens of Whale's (and Laughton's) sexuality, too. Whale was gay in a time and an industry where it was necessary for comfort, career, and survival to remain in the closet, and his horror films have a great deal of empathy for their monsters and madmen and third wheels and loners and people with secrets. Homosexuality was considered an abomination and/or perversion by much of mainstream society, and it's not too much of a stretch to see Whale's horror films as his way of struggling with this. Whale loves his monsters, who can't help being who they are, even the murderous ones in this film, and the viewer can sense real pain in their ostracization from society. Laughton was also a closeted gay man (married to the star of Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, Elsa Lanchester, a closeted gay woman), and his character's widower who pays a woman for platonic companionship is handled with such warmth and compassion by Laughton and Whale. There's also real gender-bending fun in having a woman play the elderly patriarch of the Femms, and in switching some traditionally masculine and feminine traits in the siblings played by Thesiger and Moore.
Check this movie out, why don't ya? Whale rules.