Quote:
Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs  @Nostalgic
I rather enjoy a good old dark house movie here are one or two that i recommend.
If you want to pick up a couple of British ones i really like The Night Has Eyes - about a couple of teachers who end up staying at James Mason's creepy old place on the Yorkshire moors.
Then there's The Door With Seven Locks from 1940 starring the menacing Leslie Banks from The Most Dangerous Game in a crusty old mansion replete with tombs, cob webbed corridors, Iron Maidens and murder.
Then there's The Terror. Part crime mystery that quickly becomes a secret crypt and ghostly figures old dark house movie.
All three are available from Network for i would guess under a fiver each.
Have you seen The Spiral Staircase? A masterpiece by Robert Siodmak which beautifully blends Gothic horror and Film Noir.
1934's The Black Cat is an old dark house horror with a difference. The difference being that the house is a gorgeous modern affair, however the film is grim as hell, in fact brutal for the time and boasts great performances from Lugosi and Karloff. |
Good choices Dem
The Door with Seven Locks is available from Kino as
Chamber of Horrors.
A few I've seen from the 30s and 40s that are worth checking out:
The Bat Whispers
Murder by the Clock
The Phantom of Crestwood
The Ghoul
The Cat and the Canary (Bob Hope)
The Ghost Breakers (Bob Hope)
Horror Island
The Night Monster
Arsenic and Old Lace
The House of Fear (Basil Rathbone, Sherlock Holmes)
And Then There Were None
Dragonwyck
I think Hitchcock's
Rebecca fits quite well in the old dark house category as well.
There were literally dozens of these type movies, both serious and comedies, made in the 30s and 40s and to be honest I've hardly scratched the surface in catching up with them mainly due to availability. The general category of old dark house also fits under many horror sub-categories: hauntings; fake hauntings; murder mystery; masked phantoms; monster on the loose; psychological thriller, etc.