Usually I copy & pastedit the preamble from previous years. But considering this series has been going almost as long as the blog, its getting more than just a bit long in the fang. So, here is a list of previous year's entries: 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.
This year has been a bumper crop of Horror and Horror Adjacent movies & TV, enough that I have at least half of the month downloaded, Listed or otherwise planned. And, of course, we still have tons from previous years that were skipped over for one reason or another.
This 1932 version adaptation of the 1927 novel by Benighted by JB Priestly, which was supposed to be a commentary on classes in post-WWI Britain, is a lesser known film by James Whale, the guy who did Frankenstein. It was considered lost for a while, but found again in the late 60s and more recently come to home media. We watched it on YouTube.
It actually opens with some potential. The Waverton couple, and their friend Penderel (Melvyn Douglas, Captains Courageous), are lost somewhere on the backroads of Wales -- it actually takes some paying attention to catch this is in Wales, as everyone but a later character is just speaking with the bland Transatlantic accent. They are caught in a storm, lost in the middle of nowhere, bickering and yelling at each other, while Penderel quips in the back seat. The storm and muddy road are quite impressive practical effects, including the landslide that almost takes out the car. But finally they make it to a creepy mansion... on the moors?
This Old Dark House (the house, not the film's title) is not quite the trope originator, but it is definitely one of the early definers of the genre. Its a massive edifice owned by the uber-eccentric Femm family: effete Horace (Ernest Thesiger, The Bride of Frankenstein) who should have been an undertaker, his cranky hard-of-hearing sister Rebecca (Eva Moore, Of Human Bondage) and their scary hairy mumbling manservant Morgan (Boris Karloff, Frankenstein) -- this is proper non-sensical grumbling & growling, not Arthur Webley from Hot Fuzz West-country speak. The travelers are not exactly welcomed into the house, but begrudgingly accepted but, "NO BEDS !!" as Rebecca constantly screams. The are soon joined by Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton, The Hunchback of Notre Dame), with his proper "Northern" accent, and his pretty chorus girl Gladys (Lillian Bond, The Picture of Dorian Gray).
A lot of focus is put on atmosphere. Margaret Waverton (Gloria Stuart, The Invisible Man) is all wet and yucky so Rebecca let's her change in her room, the room with the very wonky warped mirrors that leaves your face like a horror show, and hint -- don't open the windows when a Nor'wester is blowing. Also, she changes into a satin evening gown -- interesting choice. When they all sit down for dinner ("Have a potato!" Horace says menacingly) it seems genial and threatening at the same time. Meanwhile Morgan is getting drunk on gin in the kitchen, enhancing his own menace from leering to a Very Mean Drunk. And when the electrical lights go out in the storm, Rebecca wants Horace to go up four flights (exactly how tall IS this house?!?!) to grab the big lamp, but he won't have anything to do with it, and coerces Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey, Arsenic and Old Lace) into the task. And then there is the cackling ("Did you hear something? Must be the storm...") and the Locked Attic Door.
Eventually the family secrets do come out; kind of. The Waverton's find Sir Roderick Femm (Elspeth Dudgeon, in thick makeup playing a very very old man, one of her very many barely credit roles), the ancient infirmed patriarch who warns them the family is cursed. And then "never mentioned before" brother Saul (Brember Wills, Carnival) gets out of his locked room, first bemoaning the family is keeping him against his will, before discovering the carving knife and giving up the charade by harrying Penderel with his tales of being obsessed with fire. By this time, Morgan has gone on a drunken violent rampage, the ladies are locked in the cupboard and the boys (but Penderel) are locked in the kitchen. In shambling melee, Penderel and Saul fall from through second story railing and Saul is killed; Penderel only gets a bump on the head. Morgan, now sobering up, takes away Saul's body, his face torn in grief. In the morning, Horace emerges from his room with nary an "oh my" look on his face, considering half the house is wrecked. Rebecca looks onward with a sour face. Nobody seems to acknowledge their brother is dead.
I am not quite sure Whale intended on this being a campy comedy of a film, and I will leave that treatise for the film's cult following, but he most definitely did intend on all the queer coding. I am not quite sure by into the Waverton's being a bearded couple, but despite Penderel's I-just-met-you-but-I-love-you to Gladys, he is definitely played as the Gay Best Friend to the couple. And then there is Horace asking Philip if he can show him his bedroom, instead of getting the lamp his sister wants. Meanwhile Saul flirts / threatens to kill Penderel, switching mood with each heartbeat. Its most definitely a movie of its age, but I can see how it didn't hit well with audiences until much much later.
