The Old Dark House

James Whale
Part of

55th New York Film Festival

September 29 - October 15, 2017

James Whale gave a comic spin to J. B. Priestley’s 1927 gothic novel Benighted, cast from the mold of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in this horror classic, bringing the film closer in spirit to the director’s later Bride of Frankenstein.

DIRECTOR
James Whale
YEAR
1932
COUNTRY
USA
RUNTIME
71 minutes

Cast from the mold of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and the many gothic tales in its wake, J. B. Priestley’s 1927 novel Benighted was one of the most popular among the dozens of stories of the late 1920s and early 1930s for the page, stage, and screen about stranded travelers wandering through gloomy, secluded mansions at night. In their film adaptation, James Whale and his writers Benn Levy and R. C. Sherriff gave the novel a comic spin, bringing the film closer in spirit to the director’s later Bride of Frankenstein. The Old Dark House was thought to be lost in the years after Universal lost the rights, and it was filmmaker Curtis Harrington who rescued it from oblivion. A Cohen Media Group release.

The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House

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