This seminal black comedy bestrides two great horror traditions: Universal Pictures, the studio that mythologized Dracula and Frankenstein, and James Whale, the demonically inspired, Dudley-born film director. Despite exemplifying the American Gothic, this picture remains very English at heart. Nowhere is this clearer than after the shockingly messy brawl with Karloff’s drunken butler, when the protestation that ‘This is an awful house!’ is diffused by the absolute sincerity of ‘It isn’t very nice, is it?’ The film also boasts a rogue’s gallery of deranged and florid eccentrics. The principal grotesques are Ernest Thesiger (Bride of Frankenstein’s Dr Pretorius), a prissy skeleton intent on burning flowers, and Eva Moore (Laurence Olivier’s improbable mother-in-law), a withered, cackling crone shrieking ‘No beds!’ at would-be house-guests. Equally striking is Gloria Stuart (best known as Old Rose in Titanic), only recently deceased and now forever young, the eternal white flame of Whale’s extraordinary imagination.