The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: The Old Dark House (1932), directed by James Whale

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Hyacinth House", by The Doors

       There’s something pure about the idea of the ‘haunted house’ in movies. In this modern cinematic landscape dominated by 80’s reboot serial killers and bloated CGI monsters, we can often forget that one of the basest methods of building fear and suspense is putting people in a place that they don’t want to be in. From the ‘based on a true story but not really’ chills of the Amityville series to the cartoonish surreality of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, to the underrated animated gem of Monster House, creepy houses have long been a staple of the horror genre, but who were the pioneers? Who were the creepy houses that paved the way for creepy houses in cinema, the foundation for those houses if you will? Can you believe that’s what we’re talking about now?

One of the earliest members of the now famous horror movie line put out by Universal Pictures, The Old Dark House was directed by Frankenstein’s James Whale and based on a novel by J.B. Priestley. On a dark and stormy night (natch) in the Welsh countryside, a young couple known as the Wavertons and their devil-may-care friend named Penderal find themselves boxed in by flooding and mudslides, and are ultimately forced to seek refuge in a nearby old dark house. The residents of said house, neurotic Horace Femme (Ernest Thesiger, who some might remember as Dr. Praetorius in Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein), curmudgeonly sister Rebecca, and brutish manservant Morgan (Boris Karloff) do their best to engender an atmosphere of awkward tension and general unpleasantness, which is only heightened by the arrival of more guests, businessman Bill Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and chorus girl Gladys Duscayne. You see lurking within the halls of Femme Manor are things most foul, secrets which are connected to the Femme family’s history of madness, death and debuachery. Secrets which, if they are released, could spell the doom for not only the remnants of the Femme family, but their guests as well. In a way that’s completely original and not at all reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

       I keep trying to figure out a way to start off this paragraph, and the thing I keep coming back to is The Old Dark House is a very low key type of film. Very much like a stage play, which was common for film at the time, but The Old Dark House feels especially theatrical. From the large room where the majority of the film takes place to the small cast of characters, it’s like a little Agatha Christie mystery come to life. Which isn’t bad necessarily, but aside from a scene in the beginning featuring a mudslide and a short scene in Rebecca’s room there’s not much that really takes advantage of the medium. It’s not much of a visual standout either, compared to the German Expressionist-inspired visuals of Whale’s Frankenstein films. It’s got old and it’s got dark and that’s it, which is a little underwhelming considering the talking up from the family would make you think they would share an interior decorator with the Addams Family.

        Not much to say about the casting. It’s nice to see Ernest Thesiger back on the Thunder-blog of course, Charles Laughton is always a treat and the actress who played Rebecca Femme is the anchor of the film. Boris Karloff is underutilized, thrust into yet another silent monster role but with none of the emotional depth of Frankenstein’s Monster. Everyone else is just kind of there, in fact you could excise the Wavertons from the film entirely and not much would change, but they perform their duties.

       Unfortunately The Old Dark House suffers from a condition that many classic horror films suffer from, in that it’s likely not going to be scary to a modern audience. Even when compared to its fellow Universal movies, where there's a possibility of a monster lurking in the shadows waiting to strike The Old Dark House seems tame by comparison, relying almost entirely on its setting to attempt to induce fear in its audience. It ends up producing some bizarrely disconnected scenes, such as one where Ms. Waverton, for some reason that escapes me at the moment, runs around the empty living room in a panic, rushes to the door but apparently isn’t frightened enough to walk outside in the rain, and then cut to the next scene. Even the dramatic finish doesn’t hit as hard as it could, because it like the rest of the film lacks any bite. Perhaps if the pace had been slowed down a bit, because it does feel like the abridged version of a mystery novel, but when the biggest scare in the first half hour of your movie is a window being blown open I can’t say for sure.

       If you’ve already seen the big Universal monster movies and you’re ready to dig a bit deeper this Halloween, then there’s no reason not to give The Old Dark House a watch. By that same token however, if you’re not interested in those 30s horror movies there’s nothing about The Old Dark House that’s really going to pull you in. Besides the thought of home ownership in this day and age, I guess.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: The Night of the Hunter (1955), directed by Charles Laughton

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Hunter", by Portishead

     In film, much like any art form, one of the most persistent debates in its history is quantity vs. quality, or whether the scarcity of an artist’s work gives it more relevancy and artistic merit than that which is more prevalent. For example, Roger Corman is the most prolific director of all time, having directed 50 feature films and produced over 400 others as well as mentoring future talents like Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese, yet many of those films would probably be considered bargain bin B-movies at best. John Milius, on the other hand, only directed around 8 films (though he wrote several more) in his career, and yet many of those films garnered enormous critical and commercial acclaim at the time. Does the fact that Milius made less yet more well-known films make those works more ‘artistic’ than others? Does the fact that Corman approaches filmmaking from a business standpoint, and Hollywood is indeed a business, mean his movies lack merit. These are the questions that film scholars concern themselves with, instead of making or watching movies.

     Falling on the side of the ‘quality’ argument is Charles Laughton. A star of stage & screen whose career stretched back all the way to 1928, Laughton is probably most well known for his roles as Dr. Moreau in Island of Lost Souls, Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Captain William Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty. In 1955 however, Laughton stepped behind the camera to bring us The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum (Cape Fear, Out of the Past) and Shelley Winters (A Place in the Sun, Lolita). Although it was to be his only directorial role, and one of the last films he’d ever work on until his death in 1962, it has since gone down as one of the greatest films of all time, even holding a spot on a list of Top 100 American Films as compiled by the BBC. Which means that there is a lot of hype going in, and that it probably shouldn’t be haphazardly reviewed for a Halloween Movie list, but I say screw it! We’re doing it live, ladies and gents.

     A long, long time ago, in those lean Depression-era years of the Ohio River Valley, Ben Harper, desperate not to see his kids grow up in the crippling poverty that he sees befall other children, murders two men in cold blood and steals a large stash of money. Before the police come to take him away, Ben hides the money somewhere near his house, and makes his son John and daughter Pearl swear never to reveal its location. The police then arrive and arrest Ben, sending him to Moundsville Penitentiary, where he is eventually executed by hanging. Despite his young age, John never reveals the location of the money, and with no other clues it eventually passes into the realm of urban legend.

     Some time later, the sleepy little Ohio Valley town is visited by a traveling preacher, known as Harry Powers, a strikingly compelling man with the words LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers. Powers claims to have been friends with Ben in Moundsville, and manages to charm the entire town with his holy speeches and magnetic personality, even marrying the widow Harper within the week of his visiting (marriage didn’t require a lot of thought in those days, apparently). John is the only person in town who isn’t take in by Mr. Powers, and for good reason: The marriage, the friendship with Ben, it was all a fabrication, a series of lies that Powers told in order to find the stolen money. Harry Powers isn’t even a preacher at all in fact, but is instead a con man, a violently misogynistic lunatic with a history of murdering widows and robbing them of their possessions. With the whole town against him and Powers getting more and more impatient (as well as dangerous) by the day, John and Pearl must make a desperate escape and hopefully find someone, anyone, who can help them. Like a little Stand By Me with your Shining? Try The Night of the Hunter on for size.

     Although Night of the Hunter is listed as thriller, and I’d say the first half of the film certainly feels like one, by the second half I’d almost say it turns into a fairy tale. You have the child protagonist, the evil step parent, the child going on a journey and facing hardships, which eventually leads to a happy ending (because there’s not a movie made in America that will allow a child being stabbed to death). There’s never that feeling of whimsicality that comes from fairy tales here however; though the road John and Pearl travel is extraordinary it’s still tinged with the harsh realities of the time, the poverty, violence and ignorance of Depression. Perhaps that is what marks it as part of the folklore of America though. I mean, what else is Little Orphan Annie but a fairy tale?

     I will say though, that even if Hunter is a more realistic fairy tale, there are several scenes that are strikingly picturesque, and some which seem years before their time. The scene with Powers and the widow Harper, with the way the shadows cut through the room and obscures Robert Mitchum’s face, seems more like something from a German Expressionist film than the Golden Age of Hollywood. The scene of John and Pearl’s first setting out on the Ohio River by night also feels unlike anything I’ve before in films of that era, with the night sky literally looking like how one might represent it in a picture book (or a play, which makes sense given Laughton’s background in theater). I’m reminded of both Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now!, but not for anything specific.

     I’ve also got to give props for the acting, which was top notch. Robert Mitchum is to Harry Powers as Mads Mikkelsen is to Hannibal Lector: Supremely calm, genial, even likable to a degree, and then a switch is flipped and you see him for the monster that he really is. Shelley Winters is great, a bit simple, but then if she’s a fairy tale parent you kind of expect it. Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper the kindly is great. Hell, even Billy Chapin as John Harper is great, which is a nice surprise. It was a huge gamble really, because like The Goonies or Stand By Me or Monster Squad this is a movie that relies heavily on the child actors to make it work, and a whole hell of a lot of time it doesn’t at all.

     The only nit I’d have to pick with this one is that the ending is not quite the explosive finish that I was hoping for, but then that might just be my modern sensibilities triggering unfair expectations. Otherwise I’d say this was a very good film, very deserving of the praise it has earned over the years, and I’m making a recommendation to watch it. It may be a little tame compared to your typical Halloween fare, but as you might have noticed from my previous entries, I don’t necessarily think you need to watch a dude getting his arms ripped off by some hideous monster to have a good time. If I want gratuitous violence and apathetic, toxic personalities, I’ll just watch the news.