The Old Dark House

This James Whale directed chamber play seems more dead-pan comedy than horror film. The simple premise consists of a group of travelers in the Welsh countryside getting stranded in a storm and forced to take shelter in a creepy, old house whose inhabitants include a female religious nut, her atheist brother, an insane pyromaniac locked and hidden in a room, their 102-year-old father (played by a woman), and a creepy mute butler played by Boris Karloff. Whale's comedy is perverse and entertaining, and he displays his mastery of expressionistic lighting, no doubt influenced by German silent films.