Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 114: Thu May 3

The Old Dark House (Whale, 1932): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.50pm


This classic horror re-release is on an extended run at BFI Southbank from April 27th to May 3rd. You can find all the details of the screenings here.

Time Out review:
Alongside 
The Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale's greatest film, a masterly mixture of macabre humour and effectively gripping suspense. A very simple story - a group of travellers stranded by a storm take shelter in the sinister, unwelcoming Femm household, a gloomy mansion peopled by maniacs and murderers - allows Whale to concentrate on quirky characters (Charles Laughton's brash, boorish Yorkshire mill-owner, blessed with a near-incomprehensible accent, is particularly delightful) and thick Gothic atmosphere to stunning effect. But what is perhaps most remarkable is the way Whale manages to parody the conventions of the dark house horror genre as he creates them, in which respect the film remains entirely modern. (Form JB Priestley's novel Benighted
.)
Geoff Andrew


Here (and above) is the trailer.

No comments:

Post a Comment