[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Old Dark House (1932)

Following Frankenstein (1931) director James Whale turned to JB Priestley's novel Benighted for this er' old dark house terror satire which is as much a comedy of manners as it is horror film.

The plot is slight. During an atrocious storm three people are forced to call at an old Welsh mansion inhabited by stranger than strange butler Boris Karloff, an 102 year old lunatic, a fire loving brother and a God-fearing sister, not to mention Ernest "Care for a potato" Thesiger, who all suffer from at least one type of ...chosis and neurosis. Then when things can't get any odder Charles Laughton turns up with his hooker mistress.

The whole thing is bathed in an atmosphere of musky decay with the assortment of decidedly odd characters who reside in the house only adding to the foreboding creepiness of the film. With Karloff's scarred and mute brute of a butler ogling and lusting for Gloria Stuart in her underwear only part of it. Yet there's a definite streak of comic fun in there as well with Lilian Bond's showgirl and Laughton's wealthy businessman as her 'friend' at the heart of it.

Whilst making this genuine horror classic Whale also managed to spawn a genre - Old dark house films - as well as being an influence on countless other films including Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses.