The Night We Checked In and Nearly Didn’t Check Out

In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, your host Obie Knox takes you on a rain-soaked detour into James Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932), the pre-code classic that accidentally invented an entire horror subgenre by asking the bold cinematic question: What if a house was both haunted… and also just full of horrible people?

Stranded travelers Philip, Margaret, and Roger stumble into a Welsh mansion where the décor is dust, the lighting is lightning, and the hosts are one nervous breakdown away from biting someone. Inside lurk the Femm family: Horace, who greets guests like they’re Girl Scouts selling cursed cookies; Rebecca, a religious zealot who could shame a mirror; Morgan, the drunken mute butler built like a refrigerator; and Saul, a pyromaniac locked upstairs like a bonus boss battle.

As the storm escalates, so do the bizarre encounters, accidental fires, unhinged monologues, attempted murders, and an unexpected romance forged entirely from trauma bonding.

Join Obie as he breaks down how this atmospheric oddity blended horror and humor, shaped decades of “strangers trapped in a creepy house” stories, and remained one of the strangest, funniest, and most influential films ever set in a building that probably needs to be condemned.