The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
During the 1920s, the stage developed its own genre of thriller/comedies that took place in large gloomy old mansions. These were soon adapted onto film beginning in the mid-1920s. The genre peaked in the 1930s and 40s but died away after that apart from occasional stragglers.
The plots of these would usually centre a diverse group of relatives or interested parties; an innocent heroine; a criminal usually known as some type of animal; a gloomy old mansion as setting; and a balance of comedy and thrills (although some of the films are pure thrillers and feature no comedy, while later efforts of the 1930s/40s emphasise more of the comedy). Supernatural elements do appear but these are always revealed to be mundane in nature with absurdly contrived end explanations.
The first of the screen’s Old Dark House thrillers set around large mansions with the cast stalked by a masked killer. None of this prepares you for the utterly sensational visuals of this film, which leap off the screen with vivid effect
Sound remake of the silent Old Dark House classic The Bat. This retains the original’s extraordinary visuals, including use of a mobile camera, something that was groundbreaking technology for the time in ways that still astonish today
The film that defined the Old Dark House genre with spooky thrills as people are stalked around a big mansion. Expatriate German director Paul Leni brings an extraordinarily sophisticated arsenal of visual tricks to bear
A classic Old Dark House thriller from director James Whale, a droll comedy of wonderfully stylised Gothic mood and featuring a near-perfectly cast line-up of eccentrics creeping about
An Old Dark House film from the silent era. Haxan director Benjamin Christensen turns the mansion into a fantastical netherworld and creates a compulsive atmosphere of weird and fascinating happenings that is is only marred only by a contrived mundane ending
Entertaining and quite well made potboiler with Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill skulking around a big old mansion as someone or thing starts killing people off
One of the key films from William Castle, the P.T. Barnum of the horror genre. Castle always approached horror like a carnival barker. Castle does not have much style but the luridness of his shocks proves entertaining
Second sequel to Topper , the screwball light fantasy comedy about a dull man who is driven crazy by ghosts only he can see. This throws everything into an Old Dark House setting but proves there is still a good deal of droll, nonsensical humour to be found in the formula
The classic Bob Hope comedy version of the Old Dark House play. Probably overrated, this has a creaky affected atmosphere and laughs but fails to hold a candle to the far superior and more stylish silent version
Modestly effective Blaxploitation take on House on Haunted Hill that concerns voodoo rites being conducted in a big old Southern mansion
Larry Blamire, a director who specialises in genre parodies, takes on the Old Dark House thriller. Not quite up there with Blamire’s funniest films, nevertheless, the film conducts some amusing spoofs of the form
Paul Leni is one of the great unrecognised directors of silent cinema. Leni was clearly trying to replicate his earlier hit The Cat and the Canary. This is the lesser work but Leni’s visuals are incredible
The 1939 Bob Hope comedy remake of The Cat and the Canary was a big hit; here he and Paulette Goddard are put through the same in what is all but a sequel. Hope is on top form again
Remake of the earlier Bob Hope Old Dark House comedy The Ghost Breakers now made as a vehicle for the duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Probably overly long and takes forever to arrive at the haunted house but has some occasionally amiable comedic moments
Creaky but atmospheric British film where Boris Karloff dies but is brought back from the dead by an Egyptian jewel to stalk his heirs through a big old mansion
Comedy-thriller in the Old Dark House tradition with greedy relatives being bumped off in the fight for the will. A film that begins with a corpse getting married can’t be all bad.
This was misleadingly sold as a monster movie and is otherwise an Old Dark House thriller, most of which is blatantly borrowed from The Cat and the Canary
Cannon Films make an Old Dark House film that brings together an aging Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and John Carradine. This denoted the end of the Anglo-horror era but is not nearly as worthy as you feel it should have been
The East Side Kids, a popular comedy group during the 1940s/50s, conduct a variant on the Old Dark House film featuring a sinisterly lurking Bela Lugosi … The East Side Kids’ films were made on impoverished budgets – this one of their better but still aimlessly circles around creaky and dated gags
Typical Old Dark House comedy of the 1940s, which has been welded to the formula of the Our Gang comedies with a bunch of kids engaged in a comedic antics in a scary mansion peopled by apes, dead bodies and a sinister scientist
Bela Lugosi poverty row cheapie where he plays a sinister hypnotist. The only film Lugosi made in colour
The fourth of Abbott and Costello’s films, a knockoff of the then recent hit of the Bob Hope remake of The Cat and the Canary involving much comedic running around a supposedly haunted mansion
Old Dark House comedy set around the antics of big band leader Kay Kyser. Starring several horror names of the day – Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre
A forgotten item from the Anglo-horror cycle in which brother and sister Christopher Lee and Joan Collins conspire to fake a series of hauntings in order to obtain an inheritance hidden in a mansion
For all that Hammer’s Terence Fisher was raised to the status of cult director, there are efforts such as this unfunny Old Dark House comedy that reveal that he was not always on form
An entry in the 1980s slasher movie fad and featuring Linda Blair. Here a group of students are forced to spend a night in an old dark house. Slightly better than the average
The haunted part of the title is misleading but this is an attempt to update the Old Dark House thriller of the 1930s and 40s to the midst of Swinging 60s London and featuring a youth cast
At initial face value, this appears to be a 1960s revival of the Old Dark House film with a hooded figure killing a cast assembled at gloomy old mansion, but then takes a turn for the bizarre with an unexpected science-fiction twist mid-film
The Old Dark House film hit a peak in the late 1930s. This was a comedy variant featuring the entirely forgotten comedy act The Ritz Brothers stumbling around an old mansion
The fourth film version of the classic Old Dark House thriller, remade in the vein of the recent success of Murder on the Orient Express with an all-star cast of the day
An Old Dark House thriller that has the distinction of being the last horror film made during Universal’s Golden Age of Horror. The results are creaky and impoverished looking
Don Knotts was a popular comic of the era who specialised in a craven fearfulness. Here he plays in a haunted house comedy. Beyond Knotts’ comedic antics, the film never seems very interested in the haunted house aspect
Spanish film about a group of people gathered at a mansion as spooky happenings begin happening and people are killed off
The second remake of the still superior silent Old Dark House classic. The original had incredibly vivid visuals but despite the addition of sound and Vincent Price, this version feels creaky and dated
Amidst the Anglo-horror cycle of the 1970s, there was this throwback to the 1940s styled Old Dark House comedy. Made as a vehicle for comedian Frankie Howerd, this only demonstrates how creaky the genre was
The oddest collaborations of its era – between Hammer Films and William Castle renowned for his sensationalist gimmicks, who conduct a remake of James Whale’s droll horror comedy. Alas, Castle only turns out a broad farce
Comedy where the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys encounter Bela Lugosi running a Nazi fifth column operation from a haunted house, although the ghosts part eventually proves misleading
One of four cheap Mexican films that were the last works an 81 year old Boris Karloff appeared in. Here he presides over relatives gathered for the reading of his will as they are killed by malevolent toys
Both directing and starring here, Gene Wilder attempts to revive the Old Dark House comedy. By the 1980s, this was datedly creaky, while Wilder’s comedy mugging histrionics are excruciating to sit through
A film of legendarily bad proportions where a group of Country and Western singers end up in a haunted house. Despite casting some famous horror actors, this is more interested in its excruciating country performances