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Sep. 18th, 2007 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clayhornikoh. mah. goth.
I'm made snarky comments in the pat about Hot Topic- aka Goth In A Box- but they've redeemed themselves to me with their dvd offerings during Bradbury Season. Tonight, I picked up the James Whale classic The Old Dark House.
What a terrific little picture. Not much in the way of suspense as we're used to, but delightfully atmospheric.
A young married couple and a bachelor friend of theirs take shelter in the home of a brother and sister during a storm. Karloff plays the neanderthal-like servant of the siblings. Soon they're joined by another couple- a business man and his ladyfriend "companion."
Soon, crazyness ensues.
It's one of those movies you've really got to see, if only for some classic performances, a mute Karloff oozing menace, Gloria (old Rose in Titanic) Stuart as the young bride, and Ernest Thesinger- later seen as Dr Pretorius in Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein- as the brother.
The thing the struck me the most about The Old Dark House was how heavily it influenced The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The couple stranded at the strange house in the middle of nowhere - it's not a cliche in TODH, not yet. And the dinner scene in Rocky is, well, homage is a much more polite term than stolen.
Hmmm. "Making the Corpse Dance: The Cinematic Legacy of James Whale as Seen in The Rocky Horror Picture Show." That'd make for a term paper.
Too much time on my hands. Time to go to bed.
I'm made snarky comments in the pat about Hot Topic- aka Goth In A Box- but they've redeemed themselves to me with their dvd offerings during Bradbury Season. Tonight, I picked up the James Whale classic The Old Dark House.
What a terrific little picture. Not much in the way of suspense as we're used to, but delightfully atmospheric.
A young married couple and a bachelor friend of theirs take shelter in the home of a brother and sister during a storm. Karloff plays the neanderthal-like servant of the siblings. Soon they're joined by another couple- a business man and his ladyfriend "companion."
Soon, crazyness ensues.
It's one of those movies you've really got to see, if only for some classic performances, a mute Karloff oozing menace, Gloria (old Rose in Titanic) Stuart as the young bride, and Ernest Thesinger- later seen as Dr Pretorius in Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein- as the brother.
The thing the struck me the most about The Old Dark House was how heavily it influenced The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The couple stranded at the strange house in the middle of nowhere - it's not a cliche in TODH, not yet. And the dinner scene in Rocky is, well, homage is a much more polite term than stolen.
Hmmm. "Making the Corpse Dance: The Cinematic Legacy of James Whale as Seen in The Rocky Horror Picture Show." That'd make for a term paper.
Too much time on my hands. Time to go to bed.
