The Ghoul (1933)

Directed by T. Hayes Hunter [Other horror films: The Crimson Stain Mystery (1916)]

This creaky British film isn’t one that really stuck with me the first time I saw it, and after revisiting it, while The Ghoul is a decent movie in the vein of many of the horror films back there, with a solid mystery and a large amount of suspects, I don’t think it’s necessarily memorable.

It was occasionally a bit dark at spots throughout the film, which did help with the atmosphere along with prolonging the mystery, so that wasn’t a huge issue. The setting itself wasn’t really original, but you don’t always expect originality during this period of horror.

Boris Karloff didn’t really have that much screen-time, so though he was nice to see, he didn’t really amount to that much here. Cedric Hardwicke and Ernest Thesiger (Bride of Frankenstein) were both good as men with somewhat mysterious goals, which can also be said for Harold Huth and Ralph Richardson. Kathleen Harrison was good comic relief, and Dorothy Hyson and Anthony Bushell made for fine, though unmemorable, leads.

To be honest, while the movie can certainly be fun, and there are plenty of amusing lines of dialogue, a lot of this doesn’t seem like the type of stuff that’ll last, even if the mystery and the characters make it an occasionally-enjoyable movie to watch.

I have a decent time watching The Ghoul in the moment, but it’s not really any more than that, which is sort of disappointing, but there you go.

6/10