Thark (1932) User Reviews

What you might say when you see a ghost

[ptb-8 · 7/10 · 21 November 2009]

Yes, THARK is an exclamation by a person who sees a ghost in this delightfully dippy haunted house comedy...and so you can easily see the risqué joke in the title. Today of course they just bellow F**CK. There were many haunted house comedies of this period generally between versions of the Cat And The Canary and right up to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein or even Francis in a Haunted House. One of my favorite British scare comedies is The Haunted Lighthouse from about 1934. THARK (say it out loud) borrows also from The Cat Creeps, The Bat Whispers and any other films post 1927 lifted from plays about specters and weird butlers and stormy nights in a mansion, a burglary and perhaps a murder. See also THE PHANTOM OF CRESTWOOD. As far as rude movie titles go, it is a beauty and not bettered until THE AMAZING DR CLITTERHOUSE (clitoris) of the 40s. Hilarious!

Whitehall Farce transferred to screen

[gnok2002 · 4/10 · 14 October 2011]

All films deserve a review, so I intend to add one for those I have seen that so far have none. I am stringing this out as there is some minimum size requirement here for reviews, this is obviously a rare film as I write this review Oct-2011 the film has failed to register 5 votes to achieve a rating, mine is 3/7. I saw the film in Nov-2002 at the Gothique film society in London, hopefully that is sufficient 'filling' review follows, minor spoiler...

A Whitehall farce transferred to the screen, set in a supposedly haunted house which it isn't- slow to start & introduce rather too many characters, but still able to raise a few laughs in the second half when everyone is in the house.