A party of travelers-includingCharles Laughton as a Manchester magnate accompanied by a chorus girl-seek refugein a forbidding mansion in which there is more than one screw loose. They aregreeted by a brother-and-sister lunatic team and their singular household: abrute, lecherous butler, played to the hilt by Boris Karloff; a bedridden102-year-old head-of-household, and a younger brother who plays with fire. Theguests' attempts at lightheartedness in the face of this intensity areunderscored by the film's scenario which, as William K. Everson notes, "pitsthe five inhabitants of the house against the five guests. In a very rough kindof way, each has an opposite counterpart-and the night of terror brings out thebest (or worst) in all of them°" Whale mixes a quasi-realistic atmosphere(his monsters are decidedly human, his guests ever-so-civilized) with highHollywood Gothic: a tremendous thunderstorm, swirling roads, and the eerie housewith its imbedded horrors.