On the heels of his iconic hit FRANKENSTEIN, James Whale could have pretty much made whatever he liked. It is to his great credit that he made this wildly perverse mystery set in a creepy old manor during a storm. When a party of young people takes refuge in the “old dark house” of the title, the eccentricity of the inhabitants (the Femms) seems at first quaint and later terrifying. Boris Karloff gets top billing as the mute butler Morgan, and he’s certainly frightening enough, but top acting honors go to the mincing Ernest Thesiger as Horace Femm, who can make even the offer of a potato sound odd and hilarious. Co-starring Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and beautiful Gloria Stuart (whom you may recall from TITANIC many years later). One of the most ludicrously enjoyable, subversively funny movies ever made.