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1933’s The Ghoul is sometimes identified as Britain’s first talkie horror
and stars Boris Karloff, visiting home during a contract dispute with Universal.
Though it trades on the recent success of The Mummy, The Ghoul is based on a novel and stageplay
and is largely an old dark house movie based around an ancient Egyptian jewel that everyone is after,
especially lawyer, Broughton, played by Cedric Hardwicke.
‘Curious house this.’ ‘Curious owner.’
Karloff’s Henry Morlant dies, but doesn’t plan on going far.
‘For when the full moon strikes the door of my tomb, I will come back.’
I don’t think it’s any surprise that he does indeed return,
but that is sometime later, leaving the film, largely Karloff-less,
refocusing on its leading ladies.
‘My dear a most exciting thing has happened.’
‘Oh, don’t let it happen again.’
and a romantic lead whose defining characteristic is his rudeness.
‘You never did have a lot of sense did you.’
And in a the mid-section the film does become too stiffly English.
‘I think you’ve gone far enough in your insinuations’
‘Yes and I’ll go a great deal further’
and that’s me saying that.
Fortunately Karloff is aided by his butler Laing,
‘He had many a queer fancy’
played by Ernest Thesiger, who had played opposite Karloff in the previous year’s The Old Dark House,
in which he was the master,
'Have a potato.'
and Karloff the butler.
‘Scared of a dead men in his tomb – shame on yourself’
Thesiger keeps things entertaining while his master is in his grave.
‘You’re leaving the key inside?’ ‘Aye. That was another of his queer fancies.’
Incidentally, as long as I’m name-checking this is the film debut of theatre legend Ralph Richardson,
‘He even believed that at a certain hour the image of Anubis would come to life and receive his soul.’
The film also benefits from fabulous settings courtesy of art director Alfred Junge,
who had worked with E. A Dupont in Germany and would go on to work with Hitchcock and Powell and Pressburger.
The sets comfortably equal those of Universal, further enhanced by another German import,
cinematographer Gunther Krampf who had shot classics like The Hands of Orlac,
The Student of Prague, Pandora’s Box and Alraune,
he too would work with Hitchcock, on a pair of propaganda shorts during the war.
After Karloff’s return to life things do pick up again,
heading for a nonsensical but enjoyable conclusion.
‘He’s gone back to his tomb to his heathen gods.’
Another version of the story was made in 1961 as What a Carve Up,
in which the two female leads are replaced by Carry On stars, Sid James and Kenneth Connor.
'Look at that.' 'He must have been going like a bomb when he hit that wall.'
This time the story is played purely for comedy and it’s a lovely film but it does highlight an issue with the 33 version.
‘No doubt you will succeed in making a painful interview intolerable.’
There’s definitely comedy here, which has become more pronounced with time
'I shall be amoung trees, watching.'
but there’s no comedy in Karloff’s scenes
and the result is a little uneven,
as if the producers wanted a comedy but decided that, since they had landed Boris Karloff they had to go for horror.
The Ghoul was for a long time considered lost
and in its absence the remaining still pictures gave the impression of a lost horror masterpiece that the rediscovered film isn’t.
But now time has passed, and that initial disappointment has faded, the film has come to be appreciated for what it is;
flawed but entertaining.
It looks fantastic and has some great performances.
‘He’s set in his ways, and they’re the ways of the Heathen.’
You can find it on YouTube.
Thanks for watching. Are you a fan of The Ghoul? Do you prefer What a Carve Up
or 1975’s The Ghoul with Peter Cushing,
which is in not related but which we might review sometime. Let us know in the comments below.