Double Feature: Countdown to Halloween (Day 19)

The Karloff Double Feature

In which I link to two complete horror films from Boris Karloff's early film career for your viewing pleasure!

Tell me, do you like the beard?

THE OLD DARK HOUSE

James Whale’s Pre-Code horror comedy was released in 1932.  Although a hit in England, it went unnoticed in America at the time.

A powerful storm has several travelers seeking shelter at an, you guessed it, old, dark mansion belonging to a strange family named Femm.  The guests have to deal with Horace, who is on the run from the law, and his sister, the religious and malice-fueled Rebecca.  Things deteriorate when the brutish, mute butler, Morgan, gets drunk and runs amok, threatening a guest and releasing the psychotic pyromaniac brother Saul Femm.

Sites from which to gain insight:

BlumHouse

AV Club

Mmm-hmm, French Fried Taters

THE GHOUL

Karloff’s The Ghoul was released in the UK in August of 1933, the film was popular in Great Britain, but didn’t meet expectations in the States.

It disappeared and was considered a lost film for the next 31 years, until a collector located an incomplete, inaudible, subtitled copy from Czechoslovakia.  Another copy was found in a vault years later that gave restorers enough to rerelease it and clean it up for modern audiences.

Egyptologist and professor Henry Morlant (Boris Karloff) thinks an ancient jewel will give him powers of rejuvenation if it is offered up to the god Anubis. But when he dies, his assistant steals the jewel. While a gaggle of interlopers, including a disreputable lawyer and a fake vicar, descend on the professor's manor to steal the jewel for themselves, Morlant returns from the dead to punish everyone who has betrayed him.

Sites from which to gain insight:

SpookyIsles

TCM