DARK AND STORMY NIGHT (Shout Factory, 2009) D: Larry Blamire, w/ Daniel Roebuck, Jennifer Blaire. Rating: NNN DVD package: NNN Rating: NNN
The old dark house genre was popular in the 30s and 40s, typically featuring a group of people in an isolated mansion, often for the reading of a will. Murders always ensued.
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Dark And Stormy Night embraces these conventions and a whole lot more: a psychic, a hooded phantom, a clutching hand, a gorilla, a helpless ingenue, an upper-class twit, secret passages, a hidden lair, a madwoman in the attic and, as heroes, a pair of wise-cracking reporters, 8 O’Clock Farraday and Billy Tuesday.
As Farraday and Tuesday, Daniel Roebuck and Jennifer Blaire have the 30s acting style and rapid-fire rhythms down pat, as does everyone else, particularly Brian Howe as the unbelievably odious Burling Famish Jr.
You can click for a colour version, but the black-and-white looks better and is perfectly in period, except for the constantly moving camera that keeps the film from succumbing to the staginess that plagued the genre.
The dialogue recalls The Firesign Theatre’s Further Adventures Of Nick Danger: long, complicated, nonsensical speeches and loony throwaways like “the clutching hand of hospitality.” Big fun.
According to cast members on the giddy commentary, that kind of gibberish is hard to do, and onscreen crack-ups were a major problem on the shoot.
EXTRAS Commentary, making-of doc, bloopers. Widescreen, b&w, English audio. No subtitles.