Say the name James Whale and most movie fans picture neck bolts. Frankenstein and The Invisible Man made him one of Universal’s defining horror directors, but his career reached well beyond monsters. Imprint’s set wisely skips the obvious titles and digs into four films that show just how strange, flexible, and sometimes unruly Whale could be.

The Old Dark House (1932) is the crown jewel. A storm strands a group of travelers at an isolated Welsh house occupied by the spectacularly unpleasant Femm family and Morgan, their hulking, mute butler (Boris Karloff, Abbott & Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde). Whale plays the material as horror and a comedy of terrible manners at the same time, with Charles Laughton (Hobson’s Choice), Gloria Stuart (Titanic), and Ernest Thesiger all leaning into the oddness. Variety shrugged in 1932. Nearly a century later, it’s still the strangest dinner party in horror. The movie has become one of Whale’s most beloved films, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show owes it a sizable debt. 

The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) is smaller and meaner. Whale made the lean melodrama while waiting for The Invisible Man to come together, with Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) playing a defense attorney representing a friend who killed his unfaithful wife. Then he starts recognizing similar warning signs in his own marriage. The setup is nasty enough to feel almost like proto-noir, and Morgan gives the movie its best reason to keep watching. Whale liked the material enough to remake it five years later as Wives Under Suspicion, which is included here in standard definition.

The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) is the big swing, a $1 million Edward Small production with Louis Hayward (And Then There Were None) playing twins separated at birth: the cruel Louis XIV and Philippe, who has been raised far from court. Critics enjoyed it without putting it in Whale’s top tier, but the scale is impressive, and the cast includes Peter Cushing (The Abominable Snowman) in his screen debut. The film also carries an unlikely heavy-metal footnote, since Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris has reportedly cited it as the inspiration for the band’s name.

Then there is Green Hell (1940), the wild card and maybe the set’s most irresistible curiosity. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (Gunga Din) leads a group searching the Amazon for Inca gold, with Vincent Price (House of Usher) and George Sanders (A Shot in the Dark) along for the misery. Universal built an enormous indoor jungle and a temple set reportedly around 125 feet high, later recycled for The Mummy’s Hand. The New York Times called it “the best worst picture of the year,” while Price later joked that it packed five terrible movies into one. Leonard Maltin’s verdict, hokey but fun, is probably the right way in. Whale’s career was nearing its end, but the movie certainly wasn’t interested in going out with a whimper.