The Ghoul (film)
Encyclopedia
The Ghoul is a British
Horror film
starring Boris Karloff
, Cedric Hardwicke
, Ernest Thesiger
, and Ralph Richardson
, making his film debut.
borrowed just the vaguest outline from the 1928 source novel by Frank King (and subsequent play by King and Leonard J. Hines). King's novel is sub-par Edgar Wallace
in which a master criminal popularly referred to as 'The Ghoul' has been responsible for a London crime wave. Betty inherits an estate on the Yorkshire moors from a mysterious benefactor, Edward Morlant, a dabbler in mysticism
who years before had been her mother's paramour. But the will requires Betty to take up residence in the old house, where Morlant's corpse soon appears, walking and talking. Morlant tells her that he is an immortal adept
and demands the return of his secret diary. The usual suspects and interlopers converge on the house, and upon Morlant's next appearance his resurrected self is killed anew, unquestionably stabbed through the heart. Morlant is soon perambulating again, as people begin turning up dead. All supernatural
trappings are dispelled as 'The Ghoul' is penultimately unmasked as Edward Morlant's twin brother, James, a criminal mastermind whose fictive guises included not only his brother, but a bogus police sergeant and his brother's solicitor, Broughton. In a final act of madness, James torches the mansion.
The film screenplay uses the merest skeleton of the story and characters and blends it with the Egyptian mysticism of The Mummy
while capitalizing on the "thunderstorm mystery" mood of The Old Dark House
(1932), Karloff's two previous Universal Pictures
. Eccentric Egyptologist Professor Morlant believes that if he is buried with a jewel called "The Eternal Light", in a faux Egyptian tomb he has constructed at his English country estate, Anubis
will manifest before him, accept his offering of the diamond, and grant him eternal life
. Morlant appears to die, but the jewel is snatched by his servant before the internment. No sooner do the heirs arrive for the reading of the will, than Morlant rises from his tomb, finds his bauble gone, and attempts to punish the thieves. The jewel is punted from servant to lawyer to niece to Egyptian fanatic to spinster to mock vicar and eventually back to the revenant Morlant, who makes his blood sacrifice to Anubis before properly expiring. Morlant, it is learned, had merely suffered a cataleptic seizure, and had been buried alive. The mock vicar (Ralph Richardson
) is revealed to be the chief villain, and having obtained the Eternal Light sets fire to Morlant's tomb. Betty and her lover manage to escape.
over the next 31 years. In 1969, collector William K. Everson
located a murky, virtually inaudible subtitled copy, Běs, behind the iron curtain
in then-communist Czechoslovakia
. Though missing eight minutes of footage including two violent murder scenes, it was thought to be the only copy left. Everson had a 16mm copy made and for years he showed it exclusively at film societies in England and the United States, memorably at The New School
in New York City in 1975 on a Halloween triple bill of Lon Chaney
in The Monster
, Bela Lugosi
in The Gorilla and Boris Karloff
in The Ghoul. Subsequently, The Museum of Modern Art and Janus Film made an archival negative of that scruffy Prague print and it went into very limited commercial distribution.
Inadvertently in the early 1980s, a disused and forgotten film vault at Shepperton Studios
, its door blocked by stacked lumber, was cleared and yielded the dormant nitrate camera negative in perfect condition. The British Film Institute
took in The Ghoul, new prints were made, and the complete, superb version aired on London's Channel 4
. Bootleg
videotapes of this broadcast filtered among collectors for years, but when an official VHS
release arrived from MGM/UA Home Video, it was the virtually unwatchable Czech copy. Finally, in 2003, just as the title was prepared for DVD
, MGM/UA obtained the superior material for release. Audiences were grateful to simply see a major lost Karloff film in the 1970s and 1980s, but the film was disappointing in its battered condition. The restored copy has substantially raised critical appreciation of the film in modern times.
as the heroine's spinster friend, the 1961 remake, What a Carve Up!
(No Place Like Homicide in the US), was a full blown comedy that owed even less to King's story than the earlier film.
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...
Horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
starring Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
, Cedric Hardwicke
Cedric Hardwicke
Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke was a noted English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly fifty years...
, Ernest Thesiger
Ernest Thesiger
Ernest Frederic Graham Thesiger CBE was an English stage and film actor. He is best known for his performance as Dr...
, and Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
, making his film debut.
Plot
Gaumont BritishGaumont British
Gaumont-British Picture Corporation was the British arm of the French film company Gaumont. The company became independent of its French parent in 1922, when Isidore Ostrer acquired control of Gaumont-British....
borrowed just the vaguest outline from the 1928 source novel by Frank King (and subsequent play by King and Leonard J. Hines). King's novel is sub-par Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals....
in which a master criminal popularly referred to as 'The Ghoul' has been responsible for a London crime wave. Betty inherits an estate on the Yorkshire moors from a mysterious benefactor, Edward Morlant, a dabbler in mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
who years before had been her mother's paramour. But the will requires Betty to take up residence in the old house, where Morlant's corpse soon appears, walking and talking. Morlant tells her that he is an immortal adept
Adept
An adept is an individual identified as having attained a specific level of knowledge, skill, or aptitude in doctrines relevant to a particular author or organization.-H. P. Blavatsky:...
and demands the return of his secret diary. The usual suspects and interlopers converge on the house, and upon Morlant's next appearance his resurrected self is killed anew, unquestionably stabbed through the heart. Morlant is soon perambulating again, as people begin turning up dead. All supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
trappings are dispelled as 'The Ghoul' is penultimately unmasked as Edward Morlant's twin brother, James, a criminal mastermind whose fictive guises included not only his brother, but a bogus police sergeant and his brother's solicitor, Broughton. In a final act of madness, James torches the mansion.
The film screenplay uses the merest skeleton of the story and characters and blends it with the Egyptian mysticism of The Mummy
The Mummy (1932 film)
The Mummy is a 1932 horror film from Universal Studios directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff as a revived ancient Egyptian priest. The movie also features Zita Johann, David Manners and Edward Van Sloan...
while capitalizing on the "thunderstorm mystery" mood of The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House is an American comedy horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, produced just one year after their success with Frankenstein, also released by Universal Studios.-Background:...
(1932), Karloff's two previous Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
. Eccentric Egyptologist Professor Morlant believes that if he is buried with a jewel called "The Eternal Light", in a faux Egyptian tomb he has constructed at his English country estate, Anubis
Anubis
Anubis is the Greek name for a jackal-headed god associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion. In the ancient Egyptian language, Anubis is known as Inpu . According to the Akkadian transcription in the Amarna letters, Anubis' name was vocalized as Anapa...
will manifest before him, accept his offering of the diamond, and grant him eternal life
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
. Morlant appears to die, but the jewel is snatched by his servant before the internment. No sooner do the heirs arrive for the reading of the will, than Morlant rises from his tomb, finds his bauble gone, and attempts to punish the thieves. The jewel is punted from servant to lawyer to niece to Egyptian fanatic to spinster to mock vicar and eventually back to the revenant Morlant, who makes his blood sacrifice to Anubis before properly expiring. Morlant, it is learned, had merely suffered a cataleptic seizure, and had been buried alive. The mock vicar (Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
) is revealed to be the chief villain, and having obtained the Eternal Light sets fire to Morlant's tomb. Betty and her lover manage to escape.
Release and preservation
The Ghoul was released in the UK in August 1933, in the US in January 1934, and reissued in 1938. Subsequently, it disappeared and was considered to be a lost filmLost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
over the next 31 years. In 1969, collector William K. Everson
William K. Everson
William Keith "Bill" Everson was an English-American archivist, author, critic, educator, collector and film historian. He often discovered lost films.-Early life and career:...
located a murky, virtually inaudible subtitled copy, Běs, behind the iron curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
in then-communist Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
. Though missing eight minutes of footage including two violent murder scenes, it was thought to be the only copy left. Everson had a 16mm copy made and for years he showed it exclusively at film societies in England and the United States, memorably at The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
in New York City in 1975 on a Halloween triple bill of Lon Chaney
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...
in The Monster
The Monster (1925 film)
The Monster is a 1925 silent comedy horror directed by Roland West, based on the play by Crane Wilbur. It stars Johnny Arthur and Lon Chaney, and is remembered as an antecedental Old Dark House movie, as well as a precedent to many subgenre of horror films. The film has been shown on TCM network...
, Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
in The Gorilla and Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
in The Ghoul. Subsequently, The Museum of Modern Art and Janus Film made an archival negative of that scruffy Prague print and it went into very limited commercial distribution.
Inadvertently in the early 1980s, a disused and forgotten film vault at Shepperton Studios
Shepperton Studios
Shepperton Studios is a film studio in Shepperton, Surrey, England with a history dating back to 1931 since when many notable films have been made there...
, its door blocked by stacked lumber, was cleared and yielded the dormant nitrate camera negative in perfect condition. The British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
took in The Ghoul, new prints were made, and the complete, superb version aired on London's Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
. Bootleg
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
videotapes of this broadcast filtered among collectors for years, but when an official VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
release arrived from MGM/UA Home Video, it was the virtually unwatchable Czech copy. Finally, in 2003, just as the title was prepared for DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, MGM/UA obtained the superior material for release. Audiences were grateful to simply see a major lost Karloff film in the 1970s and 1980s, but the film was disappointing in its battered condition. The restored copy has substantially raised critical appreciation of the film in modern times.
Later version
Where the original film had comic relief in the person of Kathleen HarrisonKathleen Harrison
Kathleen Harrison was a prolific English character actress best remembered for her role as Mrs. Huggett in a trio of British post-war comedies about a working class family's misadventures. To modern viewers she is better remembered as Mrs...
as the heroine's spinster friend, the 1961 remake, What a Carve Up!
What a Carve Up! (film)
What a Carve Up! is a 1961 British comedy horror film directed by Pat Jackson. It was released in the United States in 1962 as No Place Like Homicide...
(No Place Like Homicide in the US), was a full blown comedy that owed even less to King's story than the earlier film.
Cast
- Boris KarloffBoris KarloffWilliam Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
as Prof. Morlant - Cedric HardwickeCedric HardwickeSir Cedric Webster Hardwicke was a noted English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly fifty years...
as Broughton - Ernest ThesigerErnest ThesigerErnest Frederic Graham Thesiger CBE was an English stage and film actor. He is best known for his performance as Dr...
as Laing - Dorothy HysonDorothy HysonDorothy Hyson, Lady Quayle was an American film and stage actress, born Dorothy Wardell Heisen in Chicago, Illinois. She was the daughter of actress Dorothy Dickson and matinée idol Carl Hyson...
as Betty Harlon - Anthony BushellAnthony BushellAnthony Bushell was an English film actor and director, who appeared in 56 films between 1929 and 1961. He also appeared on and directed various British TV series such as Danger Man.-Early life:...
as Ralph Morlant - Kathleen HarrisonKathleen HarrisonKathleen Harrison was a prolific English character actress best remembered for her role as Mrs. Huggett in a trio of British post-war comedies about a working class family's misadventures. To modern viewers she is better remembered as Mrs...
as Kaney - Harold HuthHarold HuthHarold Huth was a British actor, film director and producer. Born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire in 1892. He made his screen debut as an actor in the 1928 film One of the Best and followed it up with the role of Captain Nolan in the film Balaclava about the Charge of the Light Brigade. He directed his...
as Aga Ben Dragore - D. A. Clarke-SmithD. A. Clarke-SmithD. A. Clarke-Smith was a British actor.He was born on 2 August 1888 at Montrose, Scotland. He was educated at the University of Oxford, studying law and voice culture, and while there joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society. His stage career was interrupted by the First World War...
as Mahmoud - Ralph RichardsonRalph RichardsonSir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
as Nigel Hartley - Jack RaineJack RaineJack Raine was a British television and film actor. He was married to actress and musician Binnie Hale.-Selected filmography:* Night Birds * The Middle Watch * Fires of Fate * The House of Trent...
as Davis, the chauffeur (uncredited) - George RelphGeorge RelphGeorge Relph was an English actor. He acted in more than a dozen movies, and also many plays. He served in the British Armed Forces in World War I, and was shot in the leg, hindering his return to acting. But Relph eventually got back on stage, and his career continued...
as Doctor (uncredited)