The Bat (1959)

By 1959 the Old Dark House movie was getting rather long in the tooth as a concept but it was a genre that seemingly just wouldn’t die. The 1959 The Bat, directed by Crane Wilbur and starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead, was yet another version of the venerable stage hit written by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. There had been a silent version in 1926 and a sound version (with the title The Bat Whispers in 1930).

Agnes Moorehead plays popular mystery writer Cornelia van Gorder who has rented a spooky mansion called The Oaks. She and her secretary Lizzie (Lenita Lane) are alone in the house because the entire domestic staff has quit. They’re afraid of The Bat, a mysterious killer who has been terrorising the local community. They’re also afraid of actual bats, following a newspaper report that the bats in this area are infected with rabies.

The Oaks belongs to the local bank president, a man named Fleming. He’s gone off on a hunting trip with his physician, Dr Malcolm Wells.

A very large amount of money has been embezzled from the bank and the nice young bank vice-president, Victor Bailey, has been arrested for the crime.

There are at least three major sub-plots and the connections between them are pretty tenuous.

There are all the standard ingredients of the Old Dark House film. There are secret passageways and masked villains and lots of running about and screaming.

It’s Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead who make this movie worth seeing, insofar as it’s worth seeing at all. The other cast members are distinctly unmemorable.

Price gives one of his more understated performances but of course he still manages to be pretty creepy.

Moorehead was a much admired actress and this film gives her a rare chance to play a leading rôle. And she has a great deal of fun as the feisty mystery novelist.

Crane Wilbur, who write and directed The Bat, had a lengthy career in film, starting as an actor and moving on to directing. A lengthy career, but not a particularly distinguished one.

Creaky is the word that is inevitably going to be used when describing this movie. Not only does it belong to a genre whose glory days were the 1930s, it really does feel very 1930s stylistically as well. There’s a heavy reliance on shadowy outlines of sinister figures to provide scares. Compared to the horror movies that were being made by Hammer at about this time it must have seemed pretty tame even to contemporary audiences.

Of course any Old Dark House movie is going to have that problem of feeling dated. It’s an inherently very old-fashioned concept. The original play made its Broadway debut in 1920, so it actually pre-dates what we think of as the golden age of the detective story. The difficulty with trying to revive The Bat as a movie in 1959 is that it was either going to feel very old-fashioned, or it was going to end up with a high camp feel. The movie mostly ends up just being old-fashioned.

I personally like old-fashioned things, and I have a certain fondness for the genre but even back in the 30s Old Dark House movies were something of a hit and miss proposition.

There are numerous public domain version of the his movie floating around. Surprisingly enough it’s actually had not only an official DVD release but a Blu-Ray release as well. The version I saw was a public domain copy and the quality was atrocious. The question you have to ask yourself is whether you would bother spending real money buying the Blu-Ray or the apparently excellent Anchor Bay DVD. This really is not the kind of movie you’re likely to watch again and again.

If you’re a hardcore fan of Vincent Price or Agnes Moorehead you might get some enjoyment from this movie, otherwise you’d have to be a pretty enthusiastic devotee of Old Dark House films to bother with this one. If you want a really good Old Dark House movie, check out One Frightened Night or Tomorrow at Seven.

The Black Raven (1943)

The Black Raven is an Old Dark House movie, a genre notable for movies of widely varying quality and entertainment value. This is definitely one of the better examples.

This is a PRC picture and you know what that means. A pitifully small budget, rock-bottom production values and very few sets. It does however have George Zucco and that makes up for a lot.

Zucco plays Amos Bradford, also known as the Raven. He runs a small hotel called the Black Raven near the Canadian border. He obviously had a shady past and now it might be about to catch up to him. A small-time hoodlum who believes Bradford double-crossed him has broken out of prison and now he’s arrived at the hotel determined to even the score. Bradford is however not the easiest guy to rub out. He’s been around and he knows a trick or two.

Naturally there’s a severe storm that has washed away all the roads and bridges so the handful of guests at the Black Raven are cut off from the outside world, just as they should be in any self-respecting Old Dark House movie.

The guests are naturally a motley and slightly disreputable lot.

There’s gangster Mike Bardoni who is hoping to slip over the Canadian border. There’s a weedy little middle-aged guy named Horace Weatherby who clutches a briefcase very nervously and won’t let anyone touch it. There’s a young couple who are eloping and, rather inconveniently, there’s also the girl’s father. Her father is crooked politician and gangster Tim Winfield, which is even more awkward for the young couple. There is also of course the escaped convict mentioned earlier. To round off the cast there’s Bradford’s servant Andy (yes there’s an Amos and an Andy).

None of these people could be described as being entirely a law-abiding citizen and none could be described as trustworthy. So when the first murder takes place just about every one of them could be a suspect.

There’s also an incredibly dumb sheriff who clearly could not be trusted to investigate a case of an overdue library book.

There will be much creeping about in dark cellars, people will get slugged from behind and pushed down stairways, everyone will suspect everyone else, there will be more murders and it all takes place with lots of thunder and lightning in the background. In other words it has all the ingredients that this genre requires except that there are no hints of the supernatural.

It seems like a stock-standard plot for this genre but it does have a bit of a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. I was sure I knew the identity of the murderer but I was wrong.

George Zucco as Bradford is a slightly ambiguous character. He could be a villain or he could be a hero. Zucco is as watchable as always. The other cast members are adequate. Glenn Strange as Andy provides the comic relief which luckily is kept within reasonable bounds.

Sam Newfield directed countless B-pictures including quite a few that were pretty good movies of their type. He really goes to town with the shadows in this film. One could almost say that he overdoes it, but this is an Old Dark House movie and you just can’t have too many sinister lurking shadows in such a movie. On the whole his approach works and the movie’s pacing can’t be faulted. For a PRC movie it’s surprisingly well made.

This is a public domain title so while there are quite a few DVD releases around most are obviously going to be of fairly poor quality. The Grapevine Video edition offers a transfer that is at least reasonably watchable although some scenes are very murky indeed and most of the movie has a somewhat washed out look. They have paired this film with another Zucco flick, Dead Man Walk, on one disc. If you’re a George Zucco fan and you can pick it up cheaply enough it’s probably worth grabbing.

The Black Raven is an unassuming but vastly enjoyable little movie. It only runs for an hour but it’s non-stop fun. Highly recommended.

The Monster Walks (1932)

As you may have noticed I’ve been watching a lot of Old Dark House movies recently. It’s a genre I’m slowly warming up to. The Monster Walks, dating from 1932, is a frustrating missed opportunity - it had the potential to be an excellent example of the breed but the potential is largely wasted.

It opens in time-honoured style. It is a Dark and Stormy Night. A rich old man has died and the relatives and hangers-on are gathered for the reading of the will. Will the old man’s fortune go to his daughter Ruth (Vera Reynolds) or will his invalid brother Robert(Sheldon Lewis)  inherit part (or possibly all) of the estate? Will his faithful family retainers, Emma Krug and her son Hanns (Mischa Auer), be properly rewarded for their long service?

Ruth and her boyfriend Dr Ted Clayton (Rex Lease) are more worried about the ape in the basement. The ape has always hated Ruth. Perhaps he just finds her insufferably dull and insipid. I can understand that.

Also on hand is the family lawyer, Herbert Wilkes (Sidney Bracey), and the chauffeur Exodus (Willie Best).

Of course we know that there will be murder, and there is. And we expect some Rampaging Ape action. We also know that the house used to belong to smugglers and is honeycombed with secret passageways.

So we have everything needed here for a fine Old Dark House movie. What went wrong? The main trouble is that we’re given way too much information too early in the movie. The will is read too early. The motives are therefore too obvious and the suspense falls flat. The secret passageways do play a part but they should have been utilised more fully. There are not enough red herrings.

On the plus side Mischa Auer is terrific. It’s a very silent film-like performance but it works surprisingly well. He’s spooky and scary but we can’t help feeling some sympathy for him. Sheldon Lewis is quite good as the crippled brother. The other players are mostly somewhat on the bland side although Willie Best as the archetypal black servant has some amusing moments.

There are also a few effective visual touches. The violin scene (I won’t reveal any more about it) is suitably creepy. The constant thunder and lightning and the candle-lit scenes are clichéd elements but when they’re combined with the screaming of the enraged ape they work rather well.

Frank R. Strayer was a prolific if undistinguished director of B-movies but he handles this assignment efficiently enough. Given a better script he could have turned this into a pretty enjoyable little movie. Robert Ellis’s screenplay really is the stumbling block. He’s like a trainee chef who has all the right ingredients to hand to make a delicious mean but he can’t get the timing right. The meat is underdone while the vegetables are overcooked, and he hasn’t added quite enough spice.

This is a fairly low-budget production but fortunately Old Dark House movies don’t require much in the way of elaborate sets.

This movie is public domain and I found my copy in a Mill Creek set. The transfer is actually quite good, better than you would expect in such a set. Even the sound quality is quite satisfactory.

Despite its flaws The Monster Walks is still reasonably good fun. It’s a lesser Old Dark House movie but worth a look if you’re a fan of the genre.

Secret of the Blue Room (1933)

Secret of the Blue Room is a low-budget Universal feature from 1933, and basically it’s a mystery tale with some hints of horror. It’s another variation on the Old Dark House theme that was insanely popular at the time.

It begins with a small party thrown by Robert von Helldorf (Lionel Atwill) to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of his daughter Irene (Gloria Stuart). Also present are Captain Walter Brink (Paul Lukacs), reporter Frank Faber (Onslow Stevens) and young Thomas Brandt (William Janney). These three are all rivals for Irene’s affections. The conversation eventually turns to ghosts and Robert is reluctantly persuaded to tell the story of the haunted Blue Room in Castle Helldorf. Twenty years earlier Robert’s sister met her death in this room in mysterious circumstances. Two more unexplained deaths followed shortly afterwards. In all three cases the victim died at precisely one o’clock in the morning. Not surprisingly the room is no longer used and is kept locked. 

Thomas suggests a challenge. He, Frank and Walter will each spend a night in the Blue Room as a test of courage. His motive in proposing this idea is obviously to impress Irene. He further proposes that he should be the first to sleep in the Blue Room.

You will not be surprised to hear that this challenge has unfortunate consequences, indeed  fatal consequences for some.

Fearing a scandal, Robert von Helldorf is anxious to avoid involving the police but eventually he has no choice. Commissioner Forster (Edward Arnold) arrives to conduct the investigation in person.

The servants provide some potentially useful information but as they appear to be not entirely truthful their evidence may be less helpful than Commissioner Forster might have hoped. It does however seem likely that the maid’s story of a mysterious stranger may well be true. There is also the curious matter of Robert von Helldorf’s car which was seen leaving the castle around the time of one of the deaths although both von Helldorf and his chauffeur are adamant that the car never left the garage.

It becomes obvious that a solution can only be found if someone else will volunteer to spend the night in the Blue Room and this plan certainly brings results.

William Hurlbut’s script provides a plot that is serviceable enough with several red herrings and an exciting climax in the bowels of the castle. Kurt Neumann was a solid journeyman director and is able to extract the right amount of suspense from the story.

The setting is rather puzzling. Castle Helldorf looks like the sort of castle that suggests a central European locale and the fact that it belongs to a family with a name like von Helldorf strengthens that suspicion. The trouble is that the supporting players are much too obviously American and having a newspaper reporter a a major character suggests an American setting. In fact one gets the impression that no-one involved in the making of the film was quite sure whether Castle Helldorf should be a genuine central European castle or whether it should be a sham castle somewhere in the US.

Lionel Atwill gives what is by his standards a restrained but nonetheless effective performance without any trace of hamminess. Paul Lukacs does a fine job as Captain Brink although his performance suggests that he at least was quite certain that he was playing a central European military officer. Gloria Stuart, who appeared in a number of classic Universal horror and science fiction movies, is an effective and engaging heroine. Edward Arnold is very good also. All in all it’s a pretty strong cast. 

While the content of the movie places it in the mystery rather than the horror genre it is a Universal movie and it has much of the atmosphere of the classic Universal horror films, especially the scenes towards the end in the passageways beneath the castle.

This was a very low-budget movie even by Universal’s standards but one thing you have to say for Universal - they could make a cheap movie of this type look pretty impressive. 

One huge plus is the almost complete absence of the comic relief that is such an irritating feature of so many Hollywood genre movies of this period.

The made-on-demand DVD from the Universal Vault series is barebones but the transfer is a good one.

Unexplained deaths, a haunted room, a mysterious stranger, links to evil events in the past, secret passageways, dark secrets - all the ingredients are there to make a fine Old Dark House movie and in this case those ingredients are blended together with skill and assurance. The result is a very entertaining movie. Plus it has Lionel Atwill! Highly recommended.

One Frightened Night (1935)

The old dark house movie is a genre that has perhaps not aged all that well. The best movies of this type can however be quite delightful and One Frightened Night is definitely one of the very best.

This 1935 release from Mascot Pictures follows the established formula rigidly but it does it very well indeed.

Needless to say we start with a Dark and Stormy Night. In a textbook example of an Old Dark House. Jasper Whyte (Charley Grapewin) is the inevitable irascible old millionaire. He has decided not to wait before dividing his fortune among his heirs - he believes that the money will bring the grasping members of his family and household nothing but trouble and he wants to be alive to watch them circling one another like sharks. He’s the sort of man who enjoys such things.

There’s a million dollars (an enormous fortune in 1935) for each of these hungry sharks - his outrageously greedy niece Laura (Hedda Hoper) and her even greedier and currently financially very embarrassed husband Arthur (Arthur Hohl), his cheerfully irresponsible playboy nephew Tom (Regis Toomey), his physician Dr Denham (Lucien Littlefield), his lawyer Felix (Clarence Wilson) and his long-suffering but scheming housekeeper Elvira (Rafaela Ottiano). Jasper would have preferred to leave his entire fortune to his grand-daughter Doris Waverly but he’d cut his daughter off without a penny when she married an actor and he’s never seen Doris and all attempts to locate her have failed.

At this point the sharks are feeling very pleased with themselves but then disaster strikes - Doris Waverly (Evalyn Knapp) turns up at the house. She will now get all of Jasper’s money and they won’t get one red cent. That’s obviously a fine setup for a typical murder mystery but there’s a twist. Shortly afterwards a second Doris Waverly (Mary Carlisle) shows up! Obviously one is an impostor, but which one?

Murder inevitably follows. And of course everyone in the house has a very strong motive for committing murder, or even multiple homicides. This includes the second Doris Waverly’s friend Joe Luvalle (Wallace Ford), a slightly shabby stage magician who goes by the name The Great Luvalle.

In a good old dark house movie you expect all the trimmings and this movie has them  - there’s poisoned coffee, a mysterious masked figure, Amazonian blow guns firing poisoned darts, a locked-room murder, secret passageways and of course the lights keep going out which offers the opportunity for lots of sinister shadows. The one thing missing is  any hint of the supernatural but this film manages very well without it.

Of course there’s plenty of comic relief but the bonus here is that the comic elements are genuinely amusing and not irritating. Wallace Ford’s bumbling magician provides much of the humour, along with the obligatory bumbling Sheriff Jenks (Fred Kelsey) and his inept deputy Abner (Adrian Morris). Whoever solves this mystery we can be pretty sure it’s not going to be these less-than-stalwart representatives of the forces of law and order.  

Director Christy Cabanne made a lot of movies, none of them particularly noteworthy, but it’s hard to fault his work here. Most importantly the pacing never slackens for an instant. Wellyn Totman's screenplay from a story by Stuart Palmer provides a decent mystery plot and plenty of deliciously vitriolic dialogue.

It’s also impossible to fault any of the performances. The players all give the impression that they’re not just going through the motions, that they’re actually enjoying themselves.

This is very much a low-budget B-movie with very few sets but the necessary atmosphere of spooky mystery is achieved very successfully.

The Alpha Video DVD is not too bad by Alpha Video standards (which admittedly isn’t saying much). The sound is a bit crackly but image quality is acceptable, and this is after all a budget-priced DVD.

One Frightened Night ticks all the right boxes for old dark house movie fans. It really is great fun. Highly recommended.

Tomorrow at Seven (1933)

The popularity of Old Dark House movie may seem slightly puzzling to modern audiences but there’s no question that  they enjoyed immense success in the 1930s. Tomorrow at Seven is a rather good example of the breed.

The formula for this genre was set very early. A group of people would be isolated in a decaying rather gothic old house and something would happen to ensure that their isolation fro the outside world was complete. A murder, or more usually a series of murders, would take place. There would be hints of the supernatural, or at the very least there would be hints of strange diabolical machinations behind the scenes. There would be a dash of romance and very generous helpings of comedy. From today’s perspective the formula might seem as creaky as the old dark houses themselves but when executed well such films can actually be highly enjoyable. Tomorrow at Seven is definitely well executed.

A mysterious figure known only as the Black Ace has been responsible for a number of daring murders. He always warns the victims of their fate in advance. Detective novelist Neil Broderick (Chester Morris) is planning a book on the murders and since Thornton Drake (Henry Stephenson) supposedly knows more than anyone else about the Black Ace’s activities he is anxious to get in touch with him. On the train to Chicago he meets Martha Winters (Vivienne Osborne), the daughter of Drake’s secretary Austin Winters (Grant Mitchell).

When Drake receives the customary warning from the Black Ace he decides to head for his retreat deep in Louisiana. Drake, Winters and his daughter, Neil Broderick and two hardbitten but delightfully inept Chicago cops (played by Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh) set off for Louisiana by air. The first murder (in a slight departure from the usual formula) takes place in the air. On arrival at Drake’s remote Louisiana house the classic Old Dark House setup is complete. One of the people on the plane had to have been the murderer and now they are all in the obligatory decaying mansion in the bayous, and of course the telephone lines get cut and the co-pilot decamps with the aircraft. They are trapped in the house and one of them is a crazed killer!

Every Old Dark House movie cliché that you could wish for is here. That’s what makes this movie so much fun - it operates strictly within the conventions of its genre. Once you’re familiar with those conventions you know what to expect and much of the viewer’s pleasure comes from anticipation. It’s like a ghost train ride at a carnival.

Director Ray Enright had a lengthy if not dazzling career. He gets the job done in his customary workmanlike fashion and he keeps the pacing nice and taut. He’d started his career as an editor and when editors turn to directing they have the advantage of understanding that pacing is everything. The original screenplay by the extraordinarily prolific Ralph Spence contains all the necessary formula ingredients and as a bonus it’s quite witty.

Chester Morris was quite a big star in the early 30s. By the 40s he’d been relegated to B-movies but was rarely out of work. He had the kind of looks that allowed him to play tough guys or romantic heroes with equal facility and while he was no great shakes as an actor he was generally fairly reliable in not-too-demanding roles such as this. Vivienne Osborne was a striking actress who’d been successful in the silent era. Her career had faded by the early 40s which was unfortunate since she had a very definite screen presence and gave a superbly creepy performance in the excellent and underrated Supernatural (1933), a movie that can be considered a sort of second cousin to the Old Dark House movies.

Frank McHugh and Allen Jenkins as the wise-cracking big city cops provide the comic relief and they have one huge advantage over the usual run of comic relief actors - they are genuinely funny. They’re provided with decent dialogue as well so the comic relief in this movie actually enhances it.

The other cast members are solid enough.

The movie was clearly shot entirely in the studio on a decidedly limited budget but that was the film-making style of the early 30s and in fact that was one of the reasons Hollywood loved Old Dark House movies so much - the studio-bound feel adds to the atmosphere.

Alpha Video’s DVD release is even worse than their usual standard. The picture quality is quite acceptable but sound quality is atrocious. The dialogue can be understood but the amount of crackling and hissing can get quite distracting. On the other hand it is, like so much of Alpha Video’s catalogue, a movie that would otherwise be just about impossible to find and this one is entertaining enough to be worth grabbing despite the sound problems.

Tomorrow at Seven ticks all the right boxes for fans of this genre. Highly recommended.