Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Art Vandelay Was this supposed to be funny? Because it wasn't. Was it supposed to be frightening? It wasn't. This is so feeble I would have bet money it was made for TV. Something that might come on at 10 p.m. on Halloween 1963 after Branded or Death Valley Days or Gunsmoke. William Castle has gotta rank right up there with Ed Wood as worst director of all time. What a hack.

Nigel P JB Priestley's 1927 novel 'Benighted' was adapted very loosely into 1932's classic 'The Old Dark House', which was directed by James Whale in his own very distinct style. This in turn has been adapted equally loosely by Director William Castle for Hammer films.'The Old Dark House' stars Tom Poston, an American actor with a wonderful permanently harassed expression as Tom Penderel, a car dealer who delivers a car to a large mansion for Casper Femm, whom he subsequently discovers is dead. He meets Cecily Femm (Jeanette Scott) who warns him to leave before 'the family' find him. 'The family' are spoken of in dread tones.The worst excesses of this production are demonstrated with the arrival of Fenella Fielding's Morgana. As she floats down the stairs to greet Penderel, the 'comedy music' (an unnecessary irritation in my view – if something is funny, the audience will laugh; if we need music to tell us something is funny, there is something wrong. Here, it works directly against any dark vein of humour events may be trying to evoke) accompanies the camera's lingering obsession with her breasts. A sign of the times of course, but worlds away from the original Universal version.There are positives and negatives about this, but the overall effect is disappointing. The cast is made up of uniformly excellent, eccentric performers that seem curiously underwritten. The story is a drawing room mystery, and I have no problem with that, but it is 'enlivened' by comedy routines so pedestrian (although enthusiastically played) they hardly fulfill the promise of the publicity that 'you'll die laughing.' If the flamboyant cast had been directed by an equally unconventional director, things could have been pushed into a less in-house style. Having said that, William Castle went onto produce the acclaimed 'Rosemary's Baby' five years later.

wes-connors In a London casino, American car salesman Tom Poston (as Thomas "Tom" Penderel) accepts an invitation to visit an eccentric English friend's dilapidated old mansion. He arrives at "Femm Hall" during a rainstorm, hoping to meet some of his friend's female cousins. "I like girls," Mr. Poston says. Poston arrives to discover his host in a coffin. Equally eccentric Robert Morley (as Roderick Femm) invites Poston to stay, exclaiming, "It's not every day that we have an American for dinner..."Poston is nearly seduced by both attractive blonde Janette Scott (as Cecily) and perpetually aroused Fenella Fielding (as Morgana). There is some hint Poston might re-populate the Earth, after copulating with one of these women - but nothing comes of it. Due to the extended rain, Bible-believing Mervyn Johns (as Potiphar) is collecting animals for his ark. He hopes to include Poston as a human specimen. But murder takes priority in this story, as family members begin to meet their maker...The storyline deviates wildly from the original J.B. Priestley novel (and similarly titled 1932 film). Though produced and directed by William Castle, for the horrific "Hammer" studios of Great Britain, this is a broad comedy. As such, it gets a little more tiresome every quarter hour. The low point may be Poston being joined in his bed by "Penelope the hyena" - a special effect which evokes the wrong kind of laughter. "The Old Dark House" picks up after petering out, with a lively ending.***** The Old Dark House (10/30/63) William Castle ~ Tom Poston, Robert Morley, Fenella Fielding, Janette Scott

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!