Leofwine_draca
THE OLD DARK HOUSE has many reasons it should be a success. It's an all-colour remake of a 1930s classic that spawned an entire genre of subsequent 'old dark house' style movies, made with strong production values by the reliable chaps at Hammer Films. Imported American director William Castle came off the back of a string of enjoyable hits including HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL and THE TINGLER. You'd think that nothing could go wrong, but you'd be sorely mistaken about that.The truth is that THE OLD DARK HOUSE goes out for the out-and-out spoof approach to poor effect. American funnyman lead Tom Poston simply isn't very endearing or funny, just goofy. The supporting cast of eccentrics is very good, with Fenella Fielding in dry-run mode for CARRY ON SCREAMING, Robert Morley as funny as ever, and Mervyn Johns stealing all his scenes as the old-timer eccentric. The first half an hour of the film sets up the plot and mystery and is quite workable, but it goes downhill from there. The various murder scenes are dragged out and the story elements get sillier and sillier as they go on, with the whole 'Noah's ark' sub-plot being the real nadir. In the end, THE OLD DARK HOUSE is neither scary nor funny, just silly, and a far cry from something much more cheaply-made but far funnier, like WHAT A CARVE UP!
LobotomousMonk
Zotz!.. another William Castle and Tom Poston lighthearted dark adventure for all ages. Amusing quips and snappy banter abound. There are some plot contrivances (typically par for the Castle course). The Old Dark House would surely have been better suited for black and white film stock as the milieu is inherently sinister. That being said the full color palette does tend to heighten the humor elements of the story as Poston's pink puppy dog cheeks remind us of how sweet and naive a witless hero can be. However, the chromatic compromise confounds establishment of mood and thus character motivation. A third of the duration of the film passes prior to the formation of a real clue about the plot (which according to other reviewers holds little sway in the realm of fidelity to the original Priestly story or Whale film from the thirties). The staging/blocking and mobile framing are not constructed with any technical finesse or creative flair. I tend to find that Castle's best directing efforts are inspired by higher quality scripts he works with. For Castle, when the storytelling stammers his direction staggers and his authorial voice goes mute. There are shades of this crutch in The Old Dark House. Similar to Zotz!, Poston plays a character that reminds one of Leonid Gaidai's Shurik character - fumbling and bumbling through the simplest of tasks, getting himself into trouble way over his head, and gallantly dodging sexy, seductive women who throw themselves at him bosom to face. If you wanted to probe and plumb this film for some deeper value, try a psychoanalytic approach (either Freud or Lacan will do). Personally, I wouldn't bother... but you never know. As it stands, this is an amusing film that is best watched while doing something more important.
Jaxonhall
I watched this movie expecting to see an old school horror, but what I found was one of the greatest comedies to have ever been made! I could not help but lay on the floor crying because it was so hilarious. If only the writers of modern day shows were to write like they did for this show, they would find that their ratings would go sky high and people would start going out to the movies again for a great comedy. Even the 'dirty' parts of this film will have you laughing and wish that there was more movie to watch. I would highly recommend this film to anyone who wants to watch a comedy that does not make you feel uncomfortable. I would recommend not drinking anything before watching this, because you just may find your pants soaking wet from laughing so hard by the time it is over!
MARIO GAUCI
I used to take people to task when they said that, being fond of a particular film, they would not watch some other version of the same source material…but, while I am a fan of Hammer Horror and (to a lesser extent) genre exponent William Castle, I have to admit to being guilty of this fault (or, if you like, bias) myself when it came to my all-time favorite movie – James Whale's similarly-titled 1932 adaptation for Universal of J.B. Priestley's "Benighted"! For this reason, I have postponed viewing the by-all-accounts "best forgotten" remake (Castle apparently did, because he fails to mention it in his memoirs...and, apparently, Boris Karloff declined to participate in it for being overly jokey!) for the longest time but, in view of my ongoing Whale marathon, I thought it was high time I got around to it! By the way, though I recall coming across a copy of the novel as a kid (that is, long before I watched the original film), I have been searching high and low ever since catching up with it – given that I was intrigued enough by the back-story to wish to concoct a veritable prequel!According to "The Leslie Halliwell Film Guide", the Whale picture had adhered fairly closely to the text albeit "omitting the more thoughtful moments"; the Hammer version, then, is nothing like Whale's but it does include a nice 'exclusive' subplot involving one character's attempt to reproduce Noah's Ark! In most other respects, however, the film is a dismal failure (a pitifully poor sequence supposedly depicting a hyena attack must be seen to be disbelieved!): comedy does not suit Castle (despite his tendency towards Camp), much less Hammer (their recognizable style only coming through here in the overall look, aided by Charles Addams' evocative animated title sequence; the latter is said to owe his choice of career to a viewing of Whale's original!) and the end result barely raises a chuckle – with none of the subtle wit that so characterized the classic original! One grave mistake is the fact that only a single interloper is made to contend with the family of eccentrics, and resistible American comic Tom Poston at that; for the record, he had already collaborated with the director on the previous year's ZOTZ! (which I also own but have yet to check out).The Femms, on the other hand, are incarnated by a promising gallery of actors but to little effect: Robert Morley, Joyce Grenfell, Janette Scott, Fenella Fielding (who would play a similar role in CARRY ON SCREAMING [1966]), Peter Bull, Mervyn Johns and Danny Green; incidentally, Fielding and Bull would later appear together again in the period romp, LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS! (1969) – which I have just acquired. The Whale film had no young women, crazy or otherwise, within the household but there were indeed 2 among the stranded travelers. Whereas Morley is supposed to replace Elspeth (billed as John!) Dudgeon, Grenfell stands in for Eva Moore, Bull has a dual role (which, again, is a new addition) while Johns more or less emulates Brember Wills (since he is perhaps the looniest – that said, his murderous inclinations are transferred onto one of the ladies, which is an agreeable novelty in itself!) and Green doubles for Karloff's giant mute butler (though, in this case, his dumbness is merely a ruse!).Even if the original was relatively uneventful (a criticism leveled at it by hardened horror-movie buffs not satiated by its inherent stylized quirkiness), this one takes the form of an Agatha Christie whodunnit, with characters being eliminated one by one (among the murder methods are having water replaced by acid and, most ingeniously, a shotgun going off 'accidentally') over an inheritance – even Poston is linked with (and suspected of) this, which detaches it all the more from Whale's infinitely superior rendition! As if to emphasize this shift from Gothic horror to murder mystery, Hammer released the film theatrically in black-and-white (as per their current standard for thrillers) despite having shot it in color…with the latter prints only cropping up as TV screenings (which is how I came across my copy) and, fairly recently, DVD!
