James Whale

[5] Character actor Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) gets a leading role in this warped melodrama from director James Whale (The Old Dark House). Morgan plays an attorney defending a friend who murdered his wife after catching her in the arms of another man. When Morgan discovers his own wife (Hot Saturday‘s Nancy Carroll) is also having an affair, he plans to follow in …

[8] Five travelers end up stranded at our title location after a fierce night-time storm makes driving the English hillsides too dangerous. The family that lives there is less than hospitable, with secrets that make the evening increasingly frightening. The Old Dark House is one of the grandfathers of what is now a classic horror sub-genre. Director James Whale (Frankenstein, Waterloo Bridge) makes it a …

[8] Director James Whale (Waterloo Bridge) was given free reign by Universal Pictures to craft a sequel to his highly successful Frankenstein. The result is a more daring and stylized film considered by many to be the most remarkable in all the studio’s legacy of classic monster movies. In The Bride of Frankenstein, both Frankenstein and his monster survive their apparent deaths at the end …

[7] James Whale (Waterloo Bridge, The Invisible Man) directs Boris Karloff in his iconic performance as Frankenstein’s monster in this cornerstone of Universal Pictures’ monster movie legacy. The adaptation from Mary Shelley’s novel is somewhat loosey-goosey, but taken on its own merits, Whale’s film offers a lot of Gothic horror, expressionistic set design, and a handful of indelible images — including the monster’s laboratory ‘birth’ …

[7] This is the first of at least three film versions of Robert L. Sherwood’s play about an American soldier who falls in love with a Londoner during a World War I air raid, unaware that she is a prostitute. Director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man) delivers a solid melodrama with two great lead performers. I was particularly taken with Kent Douglass as Roy. …

[9] Ian McKellen gives his most moving film performance to date as James Whale, director of the original Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and many other Golden Age titles. Bill Condon directs and adapts from a novel by Christopher Bram that focuses on the end of Whale’s life, as he’s haunted by the memory of a friend who died in the trenches and …