Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 218: Sat Aug 10

The Old Dark House (Whale, 1932): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 4pm

This film, part of the Big Screen Classics strand, is also being shown on 5th, 10th, 25th and 29th August. Details 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.

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