How many times have you seen a film where some people are driving along a remote storm lashed road , their car breaks down and they conveniently stop just outside a large dark house ? You know what happens next don't you ? The occupants end up the guests of people who hold a very dark secret and the guests end up fighting for their lives . This 1932 film by director James Whale adapted from the novel by JB Priestley is the film that started it all
Being by Whale every academic film class will obsess about the homosexual subtext but is there actually any ? Someone is asked if they're musical which according to legend is a secret code in 1950s Hollywood asking if someone is gay but even if this was true this is supposedly confined to 50s Hollywood and would not be known to the inhabitants of early 20th century Britain . One character is referred to as being gay but the word would have entirely different connotations back then . In fact in 2013 the word " gay " seems to be the opposite word to " awesome " as in " Wow dude that/film/song/TV show was totally gay "
It's interesting that one of the characters is portrayed as a religious maniac who describes people as heathens and one can't help noticing a running theme throughout Whale's work is that if often centres around man versus God . FRANKENSTEIN has this subtext as does THE INVISIBLE MAN where characters take boundaries of science too far and suffer for it . In this film it is surprising that it's not the person with the ecclestical psyche who is the villain and one wonders if critics should examine religion as the running theme of Whale's work rather than his homosexuality
THE OLD DARK HOUSE didn't fare very well on its release and it's easy to see why . The pacing is very patchy and an audience who saw FRANKENSTEIN might be expecting to see more groundbreaking horror which doesn't really appear though of course its influence continues today . It's also a rather parochial film featuring a British setting , a mainly British production crew and cast complete with British regional accents and the film did much better at the box office in Britain than it it did in America
Being by Whale every academic film class will obsess about the homosexual subtext but is there actually any ? Someone is asked if they're musical which according to legend is a secret code in 1950s Hollywood asking if someone is gay but even if this was true this is supposedly confined to 50s Hollywood and would not be known to the inhabitants of early 20th century Britain . One character is referred to as being gay but the word would have entirely different connotations back then . In fact in 2013 the word " gay " seems to be the opposite word to " awesome " as in " Wow dude that/film/song/TV show was totally gay "
It's interesting that one of the characters is portrayed as a religious maniac who describes people as heathens and one can't help noticing a running theme throughout Whale's work is that if often centres around man versus God . FRANKENSTEIN has this subtext as does THE INVISIBLE MAN where characters take boundaries of science too far and suffer for it . In this film it is surprising that it's not the person with the ecclestical psyche who is the villain and one wonders if critics should examine religion as the running theme of Whale's work rather than his homosexuality
THE OLD DARK HOUSE didn't fare very well on its release and it's easy to see why . The pacing is very patchy and an audience who saw FRANKENSTEIN might be expecting to see more groundbreaking horror which doesn't really appear though of course its influence continues today . It's also a rather parochial film featuring a British setting , a mainly British production crew and cast complete with British regional accents and the film did much better at the box office in Britain than it it did in America