The original bump in the night, The Old Dark House is a neglected horror classic that’s never quite stepped out of the shadow of director James Whale’s landmark frighteners Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Even in 1932 its plot was vaguely hackneyed: a group of weary (but ever so droll) travellers shelter from a storm in a ramshackle Welsh mansion complete with a drunken, Neanderthal butler (Boris Karloff) and lots of skeletons in the family closet. The battered print – once considered lost – only adds to the atmosphere of claustrophobic terror as the wind whistles, thunder rolls and flickering candles illuminate the walls with ghastly shadows.
DVD Extras:
Extras-wise, the disc is scarily light: an enthusiastic, factoid-packed chat-track from horror novelists Kim Newman and Stephen Jones is perfectly pitched, but is let down by an entirely irrelevant TV interview with Sir Ian McKellen nattering about his role as Whale in Bill Condon’s biopic Gods And Monsters.
