by Stephen Vagg
When we first heard about The Haunted Barn, we couldn’t wait to see it. A forty-minute 1931 film that was considered so scary that it was banned in Victoria for children between six and sixteen. An Australian grand guignol!
A bit of digging however revealed it wasn’t quite like that – it’s a clunky comedy whose banning was considered idiotic, even at the time. That didn’t mean the ban wasn’t harmful though.
The Haunted Barn was one of the first films from FW Thing, who we have written about a few times in This column. As he had with A Co Respondent’s Course, The Haunted Barn was devised as a support feature for his feature length effort Diggers.
It was an original script by someone called Thomas A. Swain and had two directors, Gregan McMahon (who had a lot of theatre credits) and E.A. Dietrich-Derrick (who made A Co-Respondent’s Course).
The plot revolves around a barn which is occupied by various people over the course of one night. The film starts off in a restaurant where businessman John Moon (Phil Smith) tells two friends (George Edwards, Ed Brett) that he has decided to spend a night at the barn to see the ghost of bushranger Sturdy, who died there fifty years ago after being betrayed by his friend Rogan, who then hung himself.
We cut to the barn, which is occupied by three swagmen seeking solace from a storm – Red (Norman Shepherd), Bill (Desmond Keith) and Dave (Willie Driscoll). Red claims to have killed people and terrifies Bill and Dave. They are joined by an eloping couple, Ralph (John Maitland) and Joan (Donald Warne). Then a man turns up, the grandson of Sturdy (John Cameron), who reports that lunatics have escaped from an asylum. Young Sturdy still has a resentment against the Rogan family.
Ralph and Joan leave to the car to get Ralph’s wallet, which is full of money. Then another person arrives with a gun, Rose (Thelma Scott). She demands that no one leaves, then runs out again. Ralph and Joan return. They explain that they’re running away from Joan’s uncle, who is opposed to their marriage. The three swagmen and the couple settle in for the night. A man turns up unconscious but vanishes. Then John Moon arrives; he insists that young Sturdy was actually the ghost of Sturdy and the unconscious man was the ghost of Rogan.
Then a man, Ned (Ronald Atholwood), arrives chased by young Sturdy, who is chased by Rose. It is revealed that Rose is a Rogan, sister of Ned, and in love with Sturdy. Sturdy reveals that he is chasing Ned to get permission to marry Rose. Ned reveals that he was the person in the barn before – he was accidentally knocked out, then woke up and left. Sturdy and Rose are united.
Dr Glass (Royce Milton) arrives from the nearby asylum to claim two of the escaped lunatics… Ralph and Joan (a neat twist). He takes them away. Then Mr Moon’s two friends arrive and claim that they hired an actor to pretend to be a ghost for Moon – this is Red (Norman Shepherd), who’s been claiming to be a killer all night. They all leave. Two swagmen, Bill and Dave, are left by themselves with Ralph’s wallet, which turns out to be stuffed with newspaper
The film feels like a one act play for a community group – there’s a huge cast, lots of opportunities for hammy acting. It’s in that comedy old dark house vein of Seven Keys of Baldpate (a hugely popular novel and stage play which had been filmed in Australia in 1916), only without a real threat. An actual murderer or robber among the characters would have made things so much better. The sound of the wind outside is effective. We were surprisingly moved by the thought of Ralph and Joan, these two “lunatics” in love escaping an asylum.
The Haunted Barn isn’t very good, but we’ve got to say that we quite enjoyed it. It’s just so hammy and dumb and keen to entertain. It’s like a big dopey labrador of a movie, leaping up on you and licking your face – annoying, but you can’t dislike it because it’s only a labrador. There actually is the basis of a solid feature film, if a lot more work was done on the script.
The Victorian censor banned the movie in that state for children between six and sixteen on the grounds that they would be scared by the wailing wind. This decision was overruled after Thring kicked up a fuss, but he had to kick up a fuss, even threatening to move to London. It’s hard enough to make a movie without this sort of idiocy hampering a movie’s prospects in one of its biggest Australian markets. The sound effects were the one world class aspect of the picture and Thring was being punished for it. We bet no one was fired on the government’s side for making such a decision – they never are. Incidentally, the Victorian censor had no trouble passing an American film called Vice Squad around the same time because that film “had artistic merit”. Stuff them. As a result, Australian cinema, which had made horror films in the 1920s, didn’t go anywhere near them in the 1930s, even a horror comedy, unless you count some old dark house sequences in George Wallace films. Australia has made some of the world’s greatest horror films, but we avoided them for a long time because of our censor.
The author would like to thank Jodie Boehme of the National Film and Sound Archive for her assistance with this piece. Unless otherwise specified, all opinions are those of the author.
