Halloween season
simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of golden age Universal
horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip
of it by counting down Psychobabble’s
31 Favorite Universal Horrors!
#11. The Old Dark
House (1932- dir. James Whale)
James Whale played it straight with Frankenstein and delivered a solidly scary movie. But it wasn’t
very Jimmy. Now that he’d established
himself as a horror master, he could work his personality into his pictures
more assuredly, and he first did so with The
Old Dark House, which strikes a brilliant balance between Whale’s creepy
imagery (Karloff’s grunting butler, twisted Saul lurking about and setting
fires, Rebecca’s disturbingly distorted reflections) and his delicious humor.
Those images, that humor, and a fab cast turn clichés so hoary that the title
of this film became a genre unto itself into something deliriously fresh,
funny, and freaky.
