Universal Pictures, 1932

starring: Raymond Massey, Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Ernest Thesiger, Gloria Stuart, Lilian Bond, Eva Moore, Brember Wills and Boris Karloff

directed by: James Whale

the plot: Caught in a vicious storm in a desolate region of Wales, Philip Waverton (Massey) and his wife Margaret (Stuart) are reluctantly admitted along with their sardonic friend Penderel (Douglas) to a gloomy, foreboding mansion inhabited by the strange Femm family. They are soon joined by Sir Charles Porterhouse (Laughton) and his chorus girl pal (Bond). The guests try to make the best of it, but they must deal with their sinister host Horace Femm (Thesiger), who claims to be on the run from the police, and his religious, obsessive, malevolent sister Rebecca (Moore). Things get worse when the brutish, mute butler Morgan (Karloff) gets drunk, runs amok, harasses Margaret, and releases the family’s long imprisoned brother Saul (Wills), a psychotic maniac who gleefully tries to destroy the ancestral home.

why it’s good: Director James Whale had an enormous success in 1931 with “Frankenstein,” and he then turned his restless and admirably perverse sensibility to J.B. Priestley’s 1927 novel, “Benighted.” This is the original “the road-and-bridge-are-washed-out-and-you-must-spend-the-night-in-a-haunted-mansion-that-probably-houses-a-homicidal-maniac” story that would set a cultural precedent for the next century. Whale indulges a love of subtle camp coupled with a skill for suspense and terror (his greatest work would come three years later with “The Bride of Frankenstein”)Massey, Laughton and Stuart turn in fine performances, but Whale’s camera lingers lovingly on Ernest Thesiger and Eva Moore. Thesiger is Horace Femm, a waspish, queeny imp with a wicked turn of phrase and a delicious appreciation of the absurd. Moore is his sister Rebecca, a nasty, bitter piece of work who a saint might smother. As the storm escalates and Morgan succumbs to rum-fueled madness, the siblings’ sniping becomes the centerpiece of the action. The film is moody and atmospheric, and Universal’s gothic sets look marvelous. When mad brother Saul escapes from his tower room, all hell breaks loose. Melvyn Douglas turns in a charming performance as a jaded Great War vet looking for the right girl. (When mute Karloff mumbles incoherently, Douglas quips, “Even Welsh ought not to sound like that.”)

why you should own it: This film was thought lost until 1968, when director Curtis Harrington pressured Universal Studios to locate the negative, and Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., restored it (bless them). Universal’s horror output in the ’30s ranged from the stagy (“Dracula,” 1931) to the sublime (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” 1932) to masterpieces like “The Bride of Frankenstein” and “The Old Dark House.” This film is spooky, suspenseful and a howler, all at once. It also delightfully features the fetching Gloria Stuart in silk lingerie (she would retire from the screen for some 60-plus years until returning as the elderly Rose in James Cameron’s “Titanic” in 1997). “The Old Dark House” was remade in 1963 by William Castle with anemic results. The Kino Video DVD has two channels of audio commentary from Stuart and Whale biographer James Curtis, as well as a filmed interview with Curtis Harrington.