THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

Though in my review of the 1963 quasi-remake of this film I lavished high praise on the Whale version, I found being less laudatory after re-watching the 1932 HOUSE. 

One basic statement must be put forth: Whale almost certainly made the best of all the "old dark house" movies-- which I suppose comes down to a modern-day, Americanized version of the so-called "rational Gothics" from Europe. The only contender that comes to mind would be Paul Leni's THE CAT AND THE CANARY, which of course has the disadvantage of being a silent film. To be sure, a lot of "odh" films don't have the advantage of being based on a well-regarded book, and though I don't imagine I'll ever read Priestly's BENIGHTED, I've heard it said that HOUSE is an accurate adaptation. HOUSE feels a good deal more "literary" than most "odh" movies, which bestows a certain special merit on the Whale effort.

So we have three groups come together at an old dark house because of a driving rainstorm. A married couple, the Wavertons (Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart), and their friend Pendleton (Melvyn Douglas) take shelter at the isolated mansion of the Femm family. These eccentric aristocrats are initially represented by just the mansion's owner Rebecca (Eva Moore) and her brother Horace (Ernest Thesiger), though they also have a single visible servant, their butler Morgan (Boris Karloff). Viewers will eventually see a couple more weirdos rattling around in the mansion, but for the first half hour these are the only three characters the newcomers meet at the Old Dark House. Then, after an interval in which the innocent bystanders do their best to adjust to the weird habits of their hosts, two more refugees from the storm intrude on the Femm peace: Sir William (Charles Laughton) and his traveling companion Gladys (Lillian Bond). 

The mystery of the Femm house is, what's made the Femms so squirrelly? We're not talking overt weirdness, a la The Addams Family; it's just that the Femms seem "off" in regard to socialization. Possibly the original novel had more overtones of class struggle, but one can't find any such rationalizations coming from the script's two writers, one of whom had collaborated with Whale on his WATERLOO BRIDGE while the other had contributed to Whale's 1930 JOURNEY'S END. I feel sure that some political pundits have reveled in the director's apparent "deconstruction" of heterosexual families, on the theory that Whale was a homosexual with a grudge against "normalcy." But this political aspect also seems absent. If anything, the script for HOUSE seems more like an anticipation of the moral attributed (however accurately) to Sartre's 1944 play NO EXIT: "Hell is other people."

Not a whole lot happens in HOUSE. The mute Morgan regards Mrs. Waverton with open lust and seems frequently on the verge of attacking her. However, this threat doesn't really become a major problem until the last third of the film, when Morgan and Mister Waverton come to blows. Much more attention is given to the way the droll Penderel becomes infatuated with Gladys, who reveals that she really is just a non-romantic companion to the wealthy Sir William, who despite being the film's comic relief has a somewhat tragic backstory. The film's latter section also introduces the other two Femms. The first is the 102-year-old father of Horace and Rebecca, who has one extended scene in his sick-bed talking with the visitors but not really saying all that much. The second is insane brother Saul, who is a male version of "the madwoman in the attic," kept under constant guard because of his propensity for setting things on fire. 

Is Saul the reason for the Femms' terminal weirdness? I don't think his presence explains very much, though again, the novel may offer more clues on the subject. But going purely on what the film tells us, the script seems to be playing games with the audience, teasing viewers with a deep dark secret that will never be revealed. I'm familiar with one comic-Gothic film, the 1995 COLD COMFORT FARM, that exploited such a reticence for humorous effect. But in HOUSE, the non-secret doesn't really have any deeper context-- which is also the case with Whale's gimmick of having the elderly Femm patriarch played by fifty-something character actress Elspeth Dudgeon under a ton of beard- makeup.

HOUSE also doesn't Boris Karloff, who had scored the previous year in Whale's FRANKENSTEIN, much to do beyond lurking about and getting into one big fight. I suspect there was some notion that he was the "Evil Id" of the eccentric aristocrats, but if he's a part of the Big Secret, the script doesn't really deliver any intriguing suggestions. On the whole, HOUSE feels like a rather affected play, but given all the cinematic advantages of varied camera angles and greater facility with set-mounting. I may have called it a classic in the past, but now I just think it's a watchable movie with some good touches and comparative misfires.

I assume the movie ends as the novel does, without the sort of hyper-dramatic "destruction of the corrupt house" that we see both in Poe's USHER and in Whale's slightly later BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. In the end, the Femm house is mostly unchanged from the influence of its visitors, much as the infernal domain remains pretty much the same no matter who passes through it.