Frightening? maybe in tone, but fabulously funny in such a knowing way, camp as a tent full of boy scouts it's subversive traits are a credit to the subtlety of it's director James Whale.
At first glance it seems a standard fare "creepy old house" film about a family with a hidden secret, the plot revolves around a group of people getting lost on a rain sodden Welsh night, seeking shelter in a house that nobody in their right minds would ever seek shelter in no matter what the circumstances, and that's even before one meets the occupants, the Femm family (featuring the nostril flaring comic timing of Ernest Thesiger as Horace Femm and the distinctly crabby leather faced Rebecca Femm being played in a scenery eating manner by Eva Moore) and their butler, Morgan, Boris Karloff. The horror element in the picture is not of your standard "boo" scare moments, (though a couple of pretty good ones are included) but the horror of the ordinary, the psychological element of the surroundings and how they affect in turn both the inhabitants of the "Old Dark House" and it's overnight visitors.
It's the subversive comedy that marks "The Old Dark House" out though, brimming with repressed sexuality of all colours, the dialogue is crisp, knowing (some of Charles Laughton's more colourful lines being adjusted to suit him personally by Whale) and quite definitely pre the repressive "production code" in all it's innuendo ridden glory, so succesful in fact that I can never ever keep a straight face if asked for dinner somewhere and someone says to me "have a potato"
